Each school day, years ago, as my Highlands classes broke for lunch. I would recite that day’s menu. But first, a concession: I never had the faintest notion what the place we all called the “Caff” was serving — ever — so my recipe-tation was pure fantasy.
Of course, it’s a given that no student has ever admitted liking campus food. So I’d try to entice them with my favorite: Velveeta cheese poured over Cocoa Puffs — and I’d add, “as much as you want!” Then I’d wait for the lip-smacking yummy sounds from the students. On days when I’d forget to announce the menu, or for evening classes — hours after the dining hall had closed, some students would remind me of the omission.
One student, a sophisticated freshman from Manhattan, improvised once, announcing the menu: boiled parsley flakes served on a bed of steamed menudo, with a side of mayonnaise. I wondered how Audrey Jackson had been able to come up with three items I detest the most.
Now before you get the impression that my classes consisted solely of menus and menudo, let me assure you that we had actual lectures, demonstrations, class participation and only a modicum of menu emphasis. It was around that time I realized that in their listings of items, the students competed for highest honors.
One student, from Holman, who said matanzas were an almost weekly event, even submitted a list for consideration. A matanza, by the way, is usually an outdoor slaughtering of an animal — a sheep, goat or pig — for barbecue.
Did my menu announcements get out of control? Was it the class’ goal to turn my speech and journalism courses into cooking classes? Well, in spite of my disclaimer, above, in which I profess that we had actual lectures, readings, assignments and homework in my classes, I now wonder whether the material that stuck to my students’ minds was mainly menus.
Around that time, several humanities departments moved in to Mortimer Hall, the building that once sat on the site of the new Student Center. That’s when I began announcing the day’s menu; and I have no explanation as to what started that ritual.
Well, the inspiration for this column comes from an incident at Charlie’s Restaurant only Saturday. As I was preparing to order, a woman came close to my booth and said, “Don’t forget to order Velveeta Cheese with your Cocoa Puffs,” two delicacies which had not been on my mind.
What? Well instantly I realized the visitor must have been a student of mine — but from how long ago? I’ve been retired since 1999, which would place even the youngest students in their early 30s. It was actually a student, Melissa, who had been part of a Freshman Composition class I taught my first year, in 1971. And that year I vowed to learn and remember the names of all my students. That resolution lasted about a semester.
I hadn’t seen Melissa since her 1975 commencement. I learned that she’d returned to her hometown, Santa Fe, and often visited friends in Las Vegas — after 40 years. Four decades of no communication can make people virtually unrecognizable. But in Melissa’s case, the face was familiar, as was her faith, but I needed prodding to recall her name.
My friend, Lupita Gonzales, who writes the monthly Senior Profile for the Optic, holds court most mornings at Charlie’s. She was a teenie-bopper in the early ‘60s, when I wrote for Lupita’s hometown newspaper, The Gallup Independent.
After graduating from Highlands in 1968, she served a decade in Wagon Mound and had another stint at Robertson High School. As a result, hordes of former students remember her. But does she remember them? Usually, but some whom I’ve met look even older than their erstwhile high school teacher.
You see, there are many more of them (students) than there are of us (teachers). So many students approach a former teacher with, “Don’t you remember me?”
As for Melissa, I wondered: I didn’t start the menu recitation until much later, perhaps the mid-80s. How, then could Melissa have known about the days’ menu?
Ah! Mystery solved. She heard of my ritual from her daughter, who had also been in my class years later.
It’s strange how seemingly unimportant things are remembered for eons, a strain of La Triviata creating a brain worm. Obviously, upon learning how a daughter passed information on to her mother reminded me of something similar.
There was a movie, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” featuring Peter O’Toole as a lecturer in a British school for boys. Chips refused to allow a particular student to play in a rugby game due to his failure to turn in an assignment.
In one of the movie’s closing scenes, O’Toole, weathered by age, stopped a boy before class and told him how sorry he felt for not having allowed him to be in that scrimmage.
“Oh, that was my grandfather,” the child said.
• • •
NPR runs an advertisement each day for Arizona State University, “where you can get a degree 100 percent online.” Now how does that work? Is education merely the recitation of facts, the punching of keys to indicate which answer we’ve chosen? How does a music student in a voice class have her performance evacuated?
Are there athletics? Do athletes have a way of showing their prowess while online? Or do they merely write an essay on “The philosophy of basketball?”
Yeah, it’s time for this 76-year-old codger to get with the times. I realize that technology makes it faster, simpler and cheaper to beam lectures to thousands rather than tying up a whole teacher in a class of some 20 students.
But yet, as a face-to-face person, I cling to the words of Darryl Tippens, the provost of Pepperdine University, who recently said, “No PowerPoint presentation or elegant online lecture can make up for the surprise, the frisson, the spontaneous give-and-take of a spirited, open-ended dialogue.”