No. 2 Led Pencil

I was reading a short story by James Thurber in bed when some plot details started to sound familiar. Walter Mitty and his secret life. Waterbury, Connecticut. A Webley-Vickers pistol. The words 'puppy biscuit' and a nagging wife. It all congealed into a very real moment in my tenth-grade English class with Mr. Coughlin-- Mr. Coughlin, the respectable veteran teacher who served as a journalist for the Navy during Vietnam, who either had very coarse and very green hair or a terrible toupee, who wore beige corduroy blazers with suede patches on the elbows like it was going even further out of style. Despite his idiosyncrasies he always had a silent cool about him, even in his predictably cartoonish ways reminiscent of Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace. Coughlin, whose first name was probably George or Harry, was a true-blue player in the game of Words. He'd lived the life to prove it, though it's probably over now. I envy him...for the first part, I mean.

But this isn't a characterization piece; I'll cut to the chase: moments like the ones I had in bed today act as road signs telling me that I'm still going the right way, even with my altered route. If I can accidentally re-discover the Stories, Novels, Poems, and Authors that teachers from my past once laid out for me, then I'm destined to make the Big Discovery someday, whatever that may be. It's why anyone reads, really, whether they admit it or not; some giant Truth to latch on to like a lifesaver in the frigid seas of life. Some Form or Purpose in the Great Nothingness of Being, presumably one that those who've come before us have found on their deathbeds with pen in hand. But again, I digress...I learned a lot from the back corner of that classroom when I wasn't throwing pencil fragments at my sophomore-year arch nemesis who sat four rows away.

Mr. Coughlin, here's one in your honor. I hope your jowls have only grown, your glasses have only thickened, and you'd still call me 'Mish-ter Vah-shen' like you did ten years ago if I ran into you at the supermarket. Oh, and thanks for making us write in those marble notebooks every day. I still toss one on the passenger seat of my truck every morning in case the urge comes over me on lunch-break at work. Turns out a little guidance goes a long way, and some homework assignments never end...