I'm going to read from Bachelorhood.
This is called "My Early Years at School."
"In the first grade I was in a bit of a fog.
All I remember is running outside at 3 o'clock
with the others to fill the safety zone
in front of the school building where we whirled around
with our book bags hitting as many proximate
bodies as possible.
The whirling dervishes of Kabul could not
have been more ecstatic than we would
have thwacking book satchels.
But as for the rest of school, I was paying so little attention
that once when I stayed home sick
and my mother had to write a letter of excuse to the teacher
she asked me what her name was and I said I did not know.
You must know what your teacher's name is.
I took a stab at it.
Mrs. Latke, I said, latke being the Jewish word
for potato pancakes.
[LAUGHTER]
This was around the time of Hanukkah celebrations.
My mother laughed incredulously and compromised
with the salutation Dear teacher.
As I learned soon after my teacher's name
was actually Mrs. Babka, equally improbable.
She wore her red hair rolled under a hairnet
and had a glass eye, which I once
saw her taking out in a luncheonette
and showing to her neighbor while I
watched from a nearby table with my chocolate milk.
Now can it be possible that she really had a glass eye?
Probably not.
But why is it that every time I think of Mrs. Babka
my mind strays to that association.
She had a hair net and a very large nose,
of that we can be sure, and seemed
to have attained middle age.
This teacher paid no attention to me whatsoever,
which was the kindest thing she could have done to me.
She had her Rookie, she had a favorite Rookie,
who collected papers and handed out pencils.
Rookie, that little monster with a mini blouse
and dangling curls, real name was Shel.
Teacher's pet we would yell at her,
yet secretly I was attracted to Rookie and admired the way
she passed out supplies.
Otherwise I was so much in a daze
that once I got sent on an errand
to a classroom on the third floor and by the time
I hit the stairwell I had already
forgotten which room it was.
Afterwards, Mrs. Babka never used me as her monitor.
The school itself was a wreck from Walt Whitman's day
with rotting floorboards due to be condemned in a year or two.
Already the new annex that was to replace it
was rising on the adjoining lot.
But in a funny way we love the old school better.
The boys' bathroom had zinc urinals with a common trough.
The fixtures were green with rust.
The toilet stalls door-less.
And the Hadean basement where we went for our hot lunches,
an overweight black woman would dish out tomato soup.
Every day tomato soup with a skim.
Sometimes when the base-- when the basement flooded,
we walked across a plank single file
to get to the food counter.
And that ends my memories from first grade.
In the second grade, I had another teacher, Mrs. Seligman,
whose only pleasure was to gossip with her teacher pals
during lineups in the hall and fire drills
when we were supposed to be silent.
Such joy came over her when another teacher
entered our classroom.
She was so bored with the exclusive company of children,
poor woman, and lived for these visits.
By second grade, I had been anonymous long enough.
One day we were doing show and tell,
wherein each child bragged how he or she had been to the beach
or had on a new pair of tap shoes.
My parents had just taken me to see the movie Les Miserables
and Robert Newton as a tenacious gum bearing inspector had
made a great impression on me.
Besides, I knew the story backwards and forwards
because I had also read the Classics Illustrated
comic book.
As I stood up in front of the class something
possessed me to elaborate a little and bend the truth.
Mrs. Seligman, I read a book called Les Miserables.
She seemed ready to laugh in my face.
Oh who is it by?
Victor Hugo.
I stood my ground.
There must have been something in my plausible, shy, four-eyed
manner that shook her.
Her timing was momentarily upset.
She asked me to sit down.
Later when there was a lull in the activity
she called me over to her desk.
Now, tell me did you honestly read Les Miserables?
Don't be afraid to tell the truth.
Yes.
It's about this man named Jean Valjean.
And I proceeded to tell half the plot no doubt
getting the order confused but still close enough
to the original to give this old warhorse pause.
[LAUGHTER]
She knew deep down in her professional soul
that a child my age did not have the vocabulary
or the comprehension to get through a book
of that order of complexity.
But she wanted to believe, I felt.
If I stumbled she would dismiss me in a second
and I would probably burst into tears.
Yet even then I knew, children know
it better than adults, that in telling a lie fidelity
is everything.
They can never be absolutely sure
if you keep denying and insisting.
Just then one of her teacher pals
came in, the awesome Mrs. McGonigle
who squeezed bad boys into wastebaskets.
[LAUGHTER]
Do you know what, Phillip here says that he read Viktor Hugo's
Les Miserables.
Really, cried her friend archly.
Can you believe him?
Well, I don't know.
What's it about?
I've never read it.
He must be very smart if he read it and I haven't.
Tell Mrs. McGonigle the story.
It's about this man named Jean Valjean who
stole a loaf of bread I began, my heart beating as I recounted
his crime, aware that I myself was committing a parallel one.
By this time I had gotten more than the attention
I wanted and would have done anything to return to my seat.
Mrs. McGonigle was scrutinizing me sarcastically
with her bifocals and I was much more afraid
of her seeing through my deception than Mrs. Seligman.
But it came to me in a dim haze of surprise
that Mrs. Seligman seemed to be taking my side.
She was nodding and shushing the other woman's objections.
Perhaps nothing so exciting had happened
to her as a teacher for months, even years.
Here was her chance to flaunt a child
prodigy in her own classroom before the other teachers.
I told the story as passionately as I could,
seeing the movie unroll scene by scene in my mind's eye
a foot away from the desk.
There's only one way to find out,
interrupted Mrs. McGonigle.
We will take him down to the library
and see if he can read the book.
My teacher could not wait to try this out.
She rose and took my arm.
Now class, I'm leaving you alone for a few minutes.
You are to remain quiet and in your seats.
So they marched me over to the school library.
I was praying that the school had
no such volume on its shelves but the librarian
produced Victor Hugo's masterpiece with dispatch.
As luck would have it, a sort of abridged version
for young adults.
I knew enough how to sound out words
that I was able to stumble through the first page.
Fortunately, Mrs. Seligman snatched the book away from me.
See, I told you he was telling the truth.
Her mocker was silenced and Seligman was so proud of me
that she began petting my head, I who had never
received more than distracted frowns from her all year long.
But it wasn't enough.
She wanted more.
She and I would triumph together.
I was to be testimony to her special reading program.
[LAUGHTER]
Now she conceived a new plan.
She would take me around from class to class
and tell everyone about my accomplishment
and have me read passages from the book.
I begged her not to do this.
[LAUGHTER]
Not that I had any argument to offer against it.
But I gave her to understand by turning dangerously pale that I
had had enough excitement for the day.
Everyone knows that those who are
capable of great mental feats are also
susceptible to faints and dizzy spells.
[LAUGHTER]
Insensitive as she was, she got the point
and returned me regretfully to the classroom.
Every day afterward I lived in fear
of being exhibited before each class
and made to recount the deed that I had not done.
I dreaded the truth coming out.
Though my teacher did not ask me to perform Les Miserables
anymore, nevertheless she pointed me
out to any adult who visited the classroom, including
the parents of other children.
I heard them whispering about me.
I bowed my head in shame pretending
that modesty or absorption and schoolwork
made me turn red at the notoriety gathering around me.
So my career as genius and child prodigy began.
Victor Hugo, hélas, Gide said when asked to name the greatest
poet in the French language.
I say Victor Hugo, hélas, for another reason.
My guilt is such that every time I
hear that worthy giant's name I cringe.
Afterward, I was never able to read Les Miserables.
In fact irrationally or not, I have
shunned his entire oeuvre."
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.