Posting every day for NaBloPoMo has been tiring toward the end of this month. At the beginning I could hardly decide what to write about and now that we’re coming to a close I have to admit that have needed, desperately needed, the practice. There’s a wee bit of guilt about recycling the stories I once wrote about my friend Allen, but it goes away when I start to look through the archives of the blog that I used to have (now defunct) and get sucked in for hours. I’ve edited some things and left others entirely in tact. I really hope you’ve enjoyed reading about him.

Part 1

For the remainder of that school year Allen wrote to me and my students. We continued to have coffee from his thermos while at my desk and other teachers began to ask me about my new friend. At first, they seemed curious as to why I would bother giving my time to this odd creature and then they began to seem a little jealous of the time we would spend together. It was either that or they wondered how my boards got cleaned every night while theirs was only on an every-other-day basis. 

Sometimes instead of a note to me he left things. Poetry, novels, feathers, flowers, and morel mushrooms. He made me love “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, “To A Vulture” by William Cullen Bryant and several old black and white movies that he taped from the AMC channel. He adored Deanna Durbin and confessed to having a strong crush on her. 

He wrote poems and stuck them inside books for me and they were like a treasure to find. I am much more shy about sharing poetry I’ve written because it’s just not very good. Allen encouraged me though and I even brought some paintings and pottery pieces I had done. It wasn’t much, but it was for me and he was always kind in his comments about them.  That school year went by quickly and I dreaded not seeing him on a regular basis. Admittedly, I was a bad friend and didn’t keep in touch as much as I should have. He was, as ever, forgiving towards me. After a summer apart from Allen I returned to my desk to find a note from him stuck under the trivet that read:

Now that I’ve filled out your student’s questionaire, do you accept me as a student again? I only had you as a teacher for one semester last year, but boy howdy! did I learn.

Silly man. He was under the impression that he was the student.

Part Two

Over the months we got to know one another Allen left too many poems to count on my desk. Most were short, but some were longer and typed on his old typewriter. He filed them years prior and began to go through them when we met. He prefaced many of his poems with a word of caution or an explanation. Sometimes the seriousness was evident, but more often than not I would read a poem only because he gave it a weird title like “Tornado Tofu” or “A Circus of Pronouns”. After the events of September 11, 2001 he wrote a poem entitled “Stan” and emphasized the endings of the names of countries: Pakistan, Afganistan, Uzbeckistan. 

He liked to copy the great poets and pay them homage by writing a parody. Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl” turned into Allen’s “To a Vulture” and was equally as powerful. I burst into laughter when the post-it note on a stack of papers he left for me read:  “I sat down to write poem no. 2 and no. 1 came out”. Another time he left a postscript: “No. 2 is my best in a long time, if not ever. It may not be “Emily Dickenson eat your heart out” but I’d show it to her if she were around.”

Book conversations were hard to follow with the two of us. We spoke rapidly and passionately about favorites and tried to get the other to read them. For instance, our conversations of adolescent fiction were lively discussions and he  confessed to never giving adolescent fiction much thought. I had always felt silly for liking it so much, but there’s a lot of phenomenal stuff out there. Finally, he gave in and read Maniac Magee and I was impatient with him as he took his time reading it. 

“Did you finish it yet?” 

“No. Sorry. I will, though. I’ve just not been feeling well lately.” 

Eventually, he did. And he loved it. I wanted him to like it, but when he said he loved it I was all the more pleased. Our next project was reading a book together. Aloud. In one month’s time, we read “Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now” by Maya Angelou. Sometimes I followed him around while he cleaned classrooms. He still wasn’t feeling well and told me that he liked the sound of my voice, so I read most of it to him. We talked of the Newbury Awards and I told him a secret that I harbored: I would love to help choose the books that get those awards because I loved the genre so much.

Part Three

Big questions, the ones you talk about when time is of the essence, require big, honest answers. Honest answers aren’t easy to digest, but the conversations Allen and I had during the last month of the school year were tough. Nothing to lose, no boundaries. That was how we talked. This can be quite jarring and I’m no exception to the fragile human being, so I cried often and pondered not seeing this friend and losing him for the summer when he put so much into teaching me about myself.

The end of the school year approached and I finished up with my 7th graders by reading one of the books that I didn’t enjoy as a kid, but it was on the curriculum list, so I taught it. This was my fourth year teaching it and I must admit, I was finally beginning to like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Trying to make it interesting, I researched Mark Twain and found his wit and quips about life brilliant. Daily, I put a quote on the board and asked students to consider them in our classroom conversations. Allen left me a note about one of them referring to “truth” and again, we talked about the movie he had me watch The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie because this character held goodness, truth, and beauty above all else. It made me more bold and confident to discover such things and thankfully, I continued to mature as a person. There was no hesitation on my part when I asked him if he trusted God (Alice) with his life. He, at that time, wasn’t able to answer me. 

I had recounted to Allen about a sticky situation I found myself in that week. While having a discussion with a group of people (some were friends, some strangers) someone made a terribly racist remark and I was stunned into silence. Two things irritated me about this: one, everyone acted like it was no big deal and two, I didn’t challenge them on it. I just walked away. The shock from this bothered me and I talked to everyone I could about how awful it was. Allen didn’t give the accused the excuse that many others had given me: It’s not their fault for saying it in front of you, Kelly. They don’t know you’re half-black. This was not a comfort to me. 

He used this to bring up the discussion of censorship in books, particularly the one I was teaching. Someone, prior to my inheriting this classroom set, had crossed out all the bad words, including the “n” word in Tom Sawyer. 

“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has plenty of those “n” words, too.” He reminded me. “But, it’s a much better story.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked, really wanting to know.

Before he got a chance to answer, I confessed to Allen that I always thought he was a grown up Huck. Time for honesty, right? I shouldn’t have been afraid of his reaction. He was honored to have been thought of as Huck! He adored him and said that the most selfless act in all of American literature came from Chapter 31 of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn [he knew the chapter number and title by heart]. My homework assignment was to read it and respond in writing to him. 

Allen was right. He didn’t quit teaching. He just quit being paid for it.