Start with a Good Story

Donna Smith

 

Every time one of my senior English students commented, "That was a good story," suddenly, I became a little girl, curled up with my three younger sisters.   Snuggled against Mother in a feather bed, we watched her lean closer to the flickering flame of light and slowly open the pages of a brand-new book, a secret smile tugging the corners of her mouth.

            Those were the years of the Great Depression—the years before World War II.  Those were the days daddy worked with WPA road construction on Highway 666 across the steaming, sandy, sagebrush-carpeted desert from Gallup to Farmington, New Mexico.  Those were the days mother carried water from a well, shaded by a scrubby mesquite tree, to boil in the iron pot behind our trailer for laundry she scrubbed on a wooden and metal rub board.

            I remember the Christmas mornings when my sisters and I each found a pair of white anklets and a book stacked neatly under the tiny pine tree, its branches dripping

with red yarn bows and white paper chains.  Once, we even found an orange and some English walnuts stuffed in one of daddy's white cotton work-socks.

            Mostly, I remember those nights after Christmas, when Mother read to us, one chapter a night, from books purchased with scavenged pennies from scarce grocery money.

            When we were afraid, she opened the pages and created magic worlds of love and of Pooh bears.  When we were sad, lonely, or angry, she led us to Bethlehem and showed us the manger behind the inn.  When we were bored, she wrangled an invitation to Cinderella's ball.  After the ball, we danced down the Yellow Brick Road in Dorothy’s  glittering, red slippers to meet the Wizard in the Land of OZ.

Our childhood games evolved from those books.  We rode the range with Red

Ryder, went to the beach with the Bobsey Twins, solved mysteries with Nancy Drew,

served as look-out for David when he slew Goliath, and looked everywhere for the goose that laid the golden egg.

            How did Mother instill a love for literature in her children?  For one thing, she never gave us more than we could absorb at one time.  For another, she ended each night with a "cliff-hanger" so that we could hardly wait for bedtime the next night.  Too, she played all the parts.  She had a different voice, a different body position for each character.  Closing the book periodically, she involved us in the story by having us imagine what would happen next.

            As a classroom teacher, I applied that practice to my literature classes.  One year, for example, in answer to "boring," I decided we'd act out Shakespeare’s Hamlet.   Dividing my class into groups, I gave each group a scene to re-write, costume, and choreograph for the stage production.  Two of my tallest boys, macho football players, who until now had chosen "not to be" be rather than "to be," begged to re-enact the final

duel scene between Hamlet and Laertes.  Elated at their sudden interest, I gave my permission.  I should have known better.

            The play went well.  Each "star" attempted to out-do the other as he trashed scripts and ad-libbed his way through energy-packed action.  Act V began.  My guys paraded in, jumped like gazelles upon the stage.  I was impressed—capes, tank tops, tights—the whole bit.  Introducing themselves, they pointed bare toes like ballet dancers, bowed to the audience, saluted each other with homemade swords, and the conflict exploded.

            Suddenly, Hamlet lunged.  Laertes lunged.  Hamlet screamed.  Laertes screamed.  The audience screamed.  I stood transfixed.  Blood squirted from both bodies, splattering the stage and soaking the three girls on the front row.  The dueling-duo dropped like lead- weighted sacks, thudding onto the floor.

The girls jumped up, screaming, "Help!  Help!  Hamlet and Laertes killed each

other!"

            I ran toward the stage, praying, "Please.  Please. Please."

Just as I reached the footlights, Hamlet sat up, licked the catsup from his finger.

"Gotcha'," he said, grinning, red streaks, trickling across his chest from the burst balloon, taped to his underarm.  By that time, the girls, who had been in on the plot, clung to each other, laughing uproariously.

            Later, as my students left for their next class, comments drifted back to where I sat, still trembling.

            “That was fun after we got to do our own thing with it."

            "I thought it was going to be junk, but old Hamlet had some of the same problems we have today.  Weird, isn't it."

            "Yeah, man, I never thought I'd like Shakespeare, but that was a good story."

            I smiled to myself.  I was sure Will Shakespeare, wherever he is, had just given the Smith Players a five-star rating.

            Over the years, the amazement I've seen reflected in my students after the study of a great work of literature never fails to take me back to 1939, to that tiny, aluminum trailer, anchored in the middle of the Navajo Desert.  Inside, four small girls snuggle together, listening to their mother read the last chapter by kerosene lamplight.

            "Wow," they say, watching her close the book, "that was a good story."

            That one line has become the thread tying me to the hundreds of young people who have gone through my classes, many of whom are teachers themselves today.  That one line reinforces the decision I made so long ago—instill in others a love for reading.  I have never regretted my chosen vocation nor do I desire to be anything more than a teacher.  In fact, I intend to continue outfitting my kids in glass slippers and dancing with them down the yellow brick roads of print to the world of knowledge.

            Our young people have the responsibility of changing this world, of making it a better place, and how can they go without a teacher?  And what better way to start the journey than by beginning with good story?

               Thank you, Mother.