Mister Meyer
“To judge me by normal standards is like judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree.” – Albert Einstein
High school housed hormones, violence, angry people, and ignorance. Add teachers expecting normal students.
Teachers are human, and so, like anyone, they eventually succumb to the dullness of life—most people do, regardless of their job. And so, it’s no surprise that many teachers, despite our expectations and theirs, having gone into a career with the best intentions, become drones.
A well-known psychologist, widely admired for his erudition, if not his tearaway personality, is fond of saying: if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
Ouch!
The average IQ for a high school teacher is 120. This is often referred to as the sweet spot of IQ, because you are able to learn most things and still get along with most people. It occupies the 91st percentile on the Gaussian curve. (You’re smarter than 90% of the population.)
To give some perspective, the average IQ is 100, the 50th percentile.
Medical doctors are found among the 95th percentile.
I’ve heard folks with higher IQ learn faster, but sometimes have trouble socially. I happen to think this is a nasty rumor.
Hank Meyer taught Creative Writing and was marketed as a standout among our other teachers because Hank had a master’s degree. Most of the teachers made do with a Bachelors.
The average IQ of someone with a master’s is 117, which occupies the 87th percentile, but since our man Hank also smokes a pipe, we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, awarding him the 120.
Remember, I warned about literal speech? I’m wondering about someone with an IQ in the 91st percentile teaching someone in the 98th percentile. And I’m not talking about learning something solid, like a trade. He’s teaching something requiring intellectual weight, and we haven’t even considered creativity.
Creativity is a gift; you either have it, or you don’t. Creativity can’t be taught to someone not naturally creative. The psychologist I mentioned earlier characterizes this as proven science.
Many of the silent generation were struggling to be different. When you are different; posers stand out, and Hank was the sore thumb of posers. He was in a near meltdown because he was missing the boat on which Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Donovan, and other various and sundry artists of the time were sailing to millions.
Hank couldn’t decide if he wanted to be Shakespeare, Chaucer, Ringo, Howard Hughes, or Fuzzy Wuzzy. He had a huge Mark Twain mustache and hair to match, with black wires replacing the matured white mane of Mr. Clements.
He sported a wardrobe the fashion police would consider a felony, and props including a Sherlock Holmes pipe and cigarettes that could gag a goat, which he smoked – in our windowless classroom.
He was an embodiment of non-verbal-TMI.
Now, I really don’t know if he had everyone bamboozled into thinking he had it all going on, or they were schmoozing him for a grade, but there was always an admiring throng around him.
This is a hallmark of my condition: not being sure if someone is genuine or not.
The throng – that is.
I sensed something with Hank from the start.
He belched platitudes like they were diamonds and had an opinion on everything.
Most of these were mimicry of his personal favorites, Jack Kerouac – famous for showing up drunk on Firing Line, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., and especially and incessantly Jean-Paul Sartre, whose name he constantly threw around but oddly never quoted.
Most of the time in class was spent suffering Hank’s platitudes and references to Sartre’s existentialism. He said the word existentialism sans context in every class.
He would enunciate ‘Jean-Paul Sartre,’ and make it a point to tell us how his name was pronounced.
He would say, “Say, Sar-traaa…” then let his voice trail off and smile contentedly – dead air filling in for the missing context.
I felt like I was being taught by The Music Man.
I allowed myself to be halfway convinced he was legit. I was used to the gap in the continuum, but thought maybe he was at least sincere. He sounded really open to creativity, and I thought that perhaps I’d gotten lucky and found someone who could appreciate something really different.
I mean, it is high school, after all, and things are supposed to be different here—not like grade school, where they push you into a box and all.
I know – I’m doing it again.
I really wanted to be able to subscribe to the image the other students had, but the whole idea was gaining about as much traction as a rear-wheel drive car with bald tires and no chains in an uphill climb during a snowstorm.
But, I fell for it, wrote a piece, and submitted it to Hank. I was looking forward to getting some constructive criticism and maybe learning something new.
I learned something, but it wasn’t new.
The next class started as usual, as Hank rubbed his chin and looked to the ceiling for inspiration, or daydreamed. Then, he distributed our papers.
He made a comment here and there about, a nice turn of phrase or an appropriate simile or nebulous reference or whatever and then went to the front of the room to ponder and wax poetic, adding the usual reference to Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism.
He hadn’t given me my paper, and I began to realize he was going out of his way to avoid eye contact with me.
This is hard to do, because I can stare a hole through people!
I have to interject here; for me, at least, being particularly stress-resistant is a real asset. If I had not been as I was, this type of behavior would have unhinged me.
This happened often when someone would withhold something, making me wonder if I had forgotten to hand it in. It was a subtle form of gaslighting. An inside-out version of inclusion. Luckily it did not hit me the way it would a normal person.
I caught his eye a couple of times, but he quickly looked away. I put my hand up, but he waved me off, communicating with a look representing, “I’m saying something important here – whatever you want will have to wait.”
When class was over, you always had to wait till the admiring throng dissipated. When they were gone, I approached his desk. He was seated with his hands flat on the desk and his head down. His hands were on the closed folder that held our papers.
His body language communicated anticipation of gastrointestinal distress.
I said, “Ah, Mister Meyer.”
He half looked up, raising his head just enough so his eyes, if he held them at the top of their orbits, had minimum vector to see me. The look you give someone you wish was not there. Someone who was giving you pain.
Dagger eyes!
He just looked and said nothing.
I said, “Did you read my paper?”
He said, “Yes, I did.” and opened the folder.
There was red pen everywhere – question marks, exclamation points – sometimes multiples, and squiggly lines everywhere! But, oddly no comments, just random marks and no grade.
He said, “You crossed the line!”
I said, “I didn’t think creativity had boundaries. You instructed us to be as creative as possible, so I was.”
He continued to stare.
“Was it not creative?” I asked.
His reply was painful. He said, “I wanted you to be creative, but not this creative!”
I had a physical reaction, taking a step back! I looked at him as my mind raced. His words didn’t compute.
Then it happened – like it always happened.
I looked him in the eyes and said, “Oh, you mean. Not more creative than you!”
He wasn’t half looking at me now! He stood and started around his desk. When I didn’t back away, he stopped and rethought himself. He was not what one would consider svelte.
He picked up the paper, threw it on his desk, and said, “Take this and get out of here!”
I picked up the paper and left.
I don’t know what to think about this side of the condition. Do normal people have an internal alert to stop them from my reaction?
But, that would require the level of creativity – creating the issue.
It’s too elliptical a problem.
What if we did have an alert. Maybe a claxon. “This is an alert! Your sensitivities are about to be assaulted!” “Something you don’t expect and won’t understand is about to happen!” “Prepare yourself by internally rolling into a ball!”
Would it be better to roll into a ball?
There are few good movies about AS. One I like, however, is the Swedish series Bron or The Bridge. The protagonist is a female detective with Asperger syndrome. Her character’s name is Saga.
“Say, Saaah-ga…”
The depiction of the condition is pretty good, and Saga is well-played. Her coworkers are constantly making fun of her, usually behind her back, making me wonder how often this happened to me.
In one particular scene she is in a meeting with her ersatz boss, as her normal empathetic boss is in the hospital. She’s suffering from the absence of her usual boss, who appreciates her talents and smooths the way for her, because, despite her clumsy social presence, she’s an excellent detective.
The ersatz boss has just insulted her.
Saga says, “You make the same mistake that many people do. That I have no feelings.”
People assume that since our social skills appear stunted, so are our feelings. This may be true, but they are there. It takes a lot to get to them sometimes. People often have to work hard at it.
So, when a popular teacher outwardly and callously discarded me, he reopened a wound, causing me to wonder why I had let my guard down yet again.
That disk-spinning effect I explained earlier was happening inside my brain.
‘…Creative, but not this creative. What does that even mean?’ I thought. And then it hit me; he didn’t like it because he didn’t think of it!
Wow! Here I thought I was finally meeting someone who could walk the walk, not just talk the talk!
I thought about not going back to his class, but then I thought, ‘Forget him! He’s not going to deprive me of the grade for the class. I found a formula for giving him just enough crap to get an A for the class, and to his credit, he did recommend me for the experimental linguistics class in the following year, so even though he couldn’t stand me, he didn’t stop me.
He just couldn’t stand to have it right in his face – sad.
Was that my fault – I wonder.
He did not have the intended effect on me, but his behavior was attempting to condition me to:
• Not color outside the lines
• Not to have expectations outside the norm
BTW: Here’s an excerpt from the paper:
Jean-Paul Sartre sat down for breakfast at his favorite café and ordered his usual, “A cup of coffee with sugar but without cream.”
The waiter said, “I’m sorry sir; we are out of cream this morning. Is it ok without milk?”
Well, at 15, I thought it was creative.
I ran into Mister Meyer years later in a center city bookstore. He really looked defeated. I believe he said he was out of work. I know it was in the ‘80s, but not sure when exactly. I’ll have to think about it.
But not too long.