Two weeks ago I dared to m
ake a phone call I’d been contemplating for a long time to my high school creative writing teacher. For simplicity I’ll call him Mr. Doe, as in John Doe. His wife picked up the phone and said he’d left the house but, nonetheless, we chatted for an hour about our common interests in classical vocal music, and having the same ornery German professor in a small private college in Minnesota. The next day I spoke to the man, Mr. Doe, after he returned from golfing. I still felt obligated to call him Mr. Doe instead of by his first name since our last conversation occurred in 1980 when I graduated from high school.
I itched to tell him what my self-imposed heart searching process had urged me to do: confront him with a thirty-three year old issue hanging out in the back of my mind. When I was a junior Mr. Doe, our young thirty-two year old teacher enthusiastically wrote on the corner of the blackboard the week’s assignment, “Write an award-winning essay and submit to the Scholastic Writing Awards.” I’d loved his class from the very beginning when he’d insisted we write in a journal every day–something I’d already been doing for seven years by that time.
I threw myself into this new assignment and wrote draft after draft on a topic on which I was an expert. Mr. Doe always said, “Write what you know and write truths.” To a seventeen year old farmer’s daughter who went to Lutheran Church every Sunday…come H. E. double toothpicks or high water writing truths was not hard. You went to the fiery place if you wrote lies, right?
I decided to write about something I’d done every day of my school life–ride the country school bus home and be the last one off. For days I revised and added “ing” phrases, descriptions, sounds, smells and colors until the fifth draft seemed perfect. I titled it “Busing,” and mailed my story to Scholastic in the personal essay category.
A few months later a letter arrived informing me that I’d made the finals. Good! I thought. That’s better than I’ve ever dreamed. Then a few more months later I received the shocking letter congratulating me on winning first place nationally. I reread the letter to see if I was mistaken, but no, I’d really won. Someone from Chicago flew in, presented me with a $600 check and a photographer clicked lots of pictures with me, Mr. Doe, and the principal.
Yet, I remembered the day I told Mr. Doe. “Um, I think I won this contest,” as I shakily handed the letter to him.
Mr. Doe looked over the letter, rubbed his beard, leaned back in his chair and looked out his window. “I wonder why Susie Smith didn’t win.”
I looked at him, shrugged my shoulders, and without a reply took the letter back and walked away thinking, “I guess this Scholastic company must have not really picked me for the right reasons.” When Scholastic published the awards magazine and instead published the second place story about a trendy topic I felt even more confirmed that my first place wasn’t such a big deal after all. Still the community bank sent me a card with every employee’s signature on it congratulating me for my fine achievement. That was nice, but what Mr. Doe said, meant more to me.
I tucked the story in a folder and a year later entered college to pursue an English and music degree. I was the fifth child out of six but the first to go to college. I never thought much about the essay until a half-dozen years ago when my nephew said, “Aunt Laurie, did you ever write something about riding a school bus?”
“Yes, why?” I couldn’t fathom how he knew.
“Well, my English teacher, Mr. Doe read your essay to our class that you wrote a long time ago and said it had won in some contest first place and was good writing.”
“Mr. Doe said that?” I sat on my sister’s couch staring out at their cornfields. He thought it was good. Huh. I never knew. I wonder if he knows I studied English literature in England and received a degree in English or was the editor of the college literary magazine.
Again six years or so passed. I still always wanted to ask Mr. Doe why he said that dismissing phrase in 1979 when I showed him my award letter. Why he didn’t just say, “Congratulations Laurie!”
Finally we spoke on the phone two weeks ago. We exchanged the usual niceties and I told him I’m a theatre critic and working on a revision of my memoir. Then I sidled around to the question, “Mr. Doe, I’ve always told everyone you taught me my first good writing techniques, how to do free writing exercises, how to write truths, but….uh…there’s something you said that I could never decipher. When I showed you my Scholastic award letter for my bus essay, you said you didn’t understand why Susie Smith didn’t win.”
Dead silence for what seemed like an hour on the other end of the line.
“I can only say, Laurie, that back then I thought that writing had to be complicated to be good. You wrote simple and clear and direct. And you wrote about what we lived out in the country. It was fine writing. I read your essay every year to my students as an example of good writing. Did you know that?”
“Well…thank you. Actually, my nephew did mention that to me quite a few years ago–that you’d read the essay to his English class. I was surprised. It’s good to hear it coming straight from you though.”
We only chatted a few minutes longer. I hung up and looked out my apartment window of my Texas home. I felt as though the dust had cleared after the school bus passed by on the gravel road.
