On a Muni Metro streetcar two high school girls, who happened to be black, were laughing in the back seat of the car. Not normal laughter, but forced, riotous, ear-piercing, shrill, near hysterical cries. This annoyed me, and the other passengers as well. The girls seemed delighted and were encouraged by our annoyance. The noise level disturbed my reading. I was preparing to ask them to stop when I recalled that I ask my students for a minute or two of ritual laughter before beginning class, as a kind of prayer. Early adolescents find comfort with a daily routine, I have discovered.
The obnoxious laughter in the streetcar reminded of the Alan Watts Laughter Yoga lecture. He said that he laughed every morning for a few minutes for his mental and physical health. He then demonstrated for 3 or 4 minutes with standard guffaws, raucous belly laughs, giggles, lascivious chortles, condescending snickers, some hee-hees and ho-hos and howls that resembled laughing, not unlike that of the girls a few seats behind me. He concluded by saying that laughing was easier on the body than sitting in contorted positions, and more fun.
I could not help laughing along with the girls in the back of the street car, not boisterous laughter, rather a somewhat inhibited giggle, after all I am a respectable teacher who would do nothing to disturb my fellow passengers. Why were my fellow passengers upset by simple laughter? Why was I initially disturbed by it? Could one actually complain about being disturbed by laughter without appearing silly? Teens arrested for laughing would make a fine headline. How had the girls devised such an innocent, yet effective disturbance? I wanted to find out, but could not bring myself to interrupt their theatrics. I recalled that I demonstrated for my students one of the more than 28 kinds of laughter used in traditional Peking Opera. Ahh-ha, ahh-ha, ahh-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Always ahead of the current of the times, I taught them multicultural laughing. I can't imitate a pigmy laugh I heard somewhere, what a pity.
Just what is wrong with laughter, even the noisome variety? What is wrong with disturbing people intentionally with laughter? It was bothersome, but who dares complain about people laughing? I found it a benign and creative disturbance after overcoming my initial irritation. Mirth is certainly not as socially unacceptable as threats of violence, or actual violence, or graffiti, or loud music, or advertising, or illicit smoke, or drunks, or the odor of heavy perfume, the usual fare on public transit. Perhaps it was a healthy attempt to communicate their unrestrained joy. I would like to think that this is what allowed them to continue laughing for so long. Laughter has, according to Norman Cousins, a curative effect on the body. His recovery from a serious illness was attributed to laughing at Marx Brothers' films and Candid Camera shows. This idea provoked me to experiment with laughter in my classroom. Since I no longer believe in the value of prayer, and given the inevitability of legislated daily prayer in the classroom, why not try laughing as a preemptive alternative? Teachers are daily exposed to a multitude of germs and, over the years, I collected more than my fair share of colds and flus. Laughter was worthy experiment and certainly less expensive than medications and doctor visits. I suggested that students might improve their attendance with sufficient laughter and I might take mental health days rather than lying sick abed. I proposed to my classes that we could either laugh for a short time before starting class each day, or we could sing a half minute of Gregorian Chant ( "a prayer sung is twice said"-St. Augustine). Laughter won out, but this was prior to Gregorian Chant topping the pop music charts. Not all of the students in my classes enjoyed laughing, however. A few refused to play with the rest of us, most of them eventually relented, but not every day. This was fine with me, since I demand some rebellion and it is not often they are requested to laugh, especially out of usual contexts. I suggested that laughter be added to the report card, along with kindness, consideration, gentleness and other character traits generally absent in schools. One student even gave me a laughing license. I, of course, was regarded by many children as benignly deranged, or just my silly self. I was serious. A few of the students observed that I only missed school for mental health days the rest of the year..
Quotes about laughter bedecked the cluttered walls of my classroom. Mark Twain: There is no laughter in heaven. Henri Bergson: Laughter is the way society controls rigidity. Lao Tzu: When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he laughs out loud. If he didn't laugh it wouldn't be the Tao. Also displayed on the walls were paintings by Magritte, Asian masters, Dali, old periodic tables, a chart of shoes in history and student work in the absurdist vein. Shelves exhibited replicas of Readymades by Man Ray (Metronome with eye, coat hanger mobile, blue french bread on scale) and Marcel Duchamp's bicycle wheel mounted on stool, as well as student impressions of the Dada and Surrealist periods. All of this was scattered among surfboards, collections of hats, shoes and balls, huge nuts & bolts, altered TV sets, Barbie hanging by a noose, assorted bones, a blow fish, some 50 clocks (the school clock failed to keep accurate time so my students & friends provided me with coo-coo clocks, ship clocks, fan clocks, toilet clocks, backward clocks, Chinese clocks and a gigantic wrist watch, to list only a few) and the flotsam and jetsam of the 20th Century that we considered appropriate. Visiting parents, teachers from foreign countries and school administrators were confused by the apparent lack of coherence in my classroom. It was difficult to categorize, or even figure out what I was teaching. This delighted me greatly. My early performance evaluations frequently included comments about the messy condition of the room. One vice principal even called in the fire marshal to inspect it for safety (it was OK). Later, after a published article praised my room as an "intellectual and visual treasure chest", the principal always proudly included my room on the school tour for visiting dignitaries. I guess that my classroom was an example of diversity and demonstrated the principals. The condition of my classroom was never again mentioned in my evaluations. Confusion leads to thinking. Laughter follows thinking, I think.
Two more stops on the street car and the girls were still laughing. I admired their stamina. Several of my fellow passengers were now smiling. Upon further reflection, I realized that laughter, humor, incongruity, and a sense of the absurd were integral to my life and, fortunately, helped promote learning, especially with early adolescents. Some scholars suggest that a highly developed sense of humor is associated with creativity and so-called giftedness. Arthur Koestler goes as far as stating that humor is a primary trait of high intelligence. I, too, have noticed this in my students.
I once attended a school district sponsored humor conference. I fully expected it to be dull, as were most school district events. However, I was dumbfounded to find one of my heroes, Paul Krasner, on the program. Unaware he would be on the program, I had brought a copy of his book The Best of the Realist to read during dull moments. I had the pleasure of driving him home after his presentation. He was a genuine person, and funny off stage and page. Alan Dundes, the UC Berkeley humor folklorist, was stimulating and had a down-to- earth far ranging sense of humor. We also attended a performance by Bill Irwin. This so-called clown challenged much of my current thinking about television, but on an esoteric level. Most of the other speakers were also memorable, but I forget their names. In the 26 years I taught in San Francisco's public schools this conference was the single best perk the school district provided me, other than the use of the school gym for basketball.
What about the girls on the streetcar? Were they just clowning around? Were they expressing their social deviance in a creative manner? Were they drama students on assignment? Were they only being silly? I will never know, but I still think about it. I continued laughing along with the girls, albeit quietly, until the they got off the streetcar after 10 minutes of full out screeching. As they left the car they were perplexed by my profuse thanks.
Prague, on May 23, 1993, was rainy with occasional sunny breaks which revealed to us why the ceilings of the Baroque churches were decked with roiling clouds. The painters were simply representing heaven by painting the cloud filled skies above them. My wife, Judy, and I had just visited the National Museum's show of Gothic and Baroque Religious Art. After such a visual feast, both in the museum and the sky, we needed a drink. We returned to a nearby cafe where we had had a sublime Pilsner Urquell dark beer, on tap. We approached one of the outdoor tables and greeted Zena, who had been a star student of mine 6 or 7 years ago. It seemed quite natural to bump into her in Prague, though we were surprised. We drank beer together, discussed fate and caught up on each others activities. Zena was killing time before attending a Latin Mass at a nearby church. She was spending a few weeks with friends in Prague before going to a summer session at Oxford.
Let me tell about Zena. She is off-the-scale bright, as she demonstrated in my classes for three years. Her interests were primarily academic and she was a voracious reader. She laughed lots, was funny and had a sophisticated, if perverse, sense of humor. She endeared herself to me by refusing to stand with her classmates to greet me at the beginning of each class.
(Allow please this digression. I once taught a class called Manners and Morals for Modern-day Youth, a mixture of geography, anthropology and history. I read the students an account of how teachers were greeted by their students in the Soviet Union. Students rose and stood silently at attention until they were addressed by the teacher, whereupon they greeted her. We tried it and the students wanted to continue the practice daily. It became a tradition in my classroom. The greetings ranged from "Good morning Mr. Foreman, Sir" to "Guten morgen Herr Professor Doctor Mentor Coordinator Foreman, Sir," with plenty of variations over the years. Given the playful atmosphere of my classroom, this formal incongruity they indulged good-naturedly until I retired.)
The rebellious Zena was conflicted because, she said, she liked and respected me but could not play along because she felt the practice encouraged mindless obedience and was fascistic besides. She wrote out her objections on a poster which was placed on the wall near her table. I, of course, excused her from participating in the daily greeting, and extravagantly praised her deviance. Only one other student, to my dismay, joined with her in this healthy well-considered protest. I felt that my attempts to instill fearless independence in the character of my students had not been entirely futile. Two got it.
I will not dwell on the complexities of Zena's mind, since she has kept lots of it private and this is simply a anecdote that purports to relate that some students still do read. The summer after Zena graduated from the 8th grade, she and other members of the Grammar Club asked if we could continue to meet once a week at a coffee house. I was elated, children actually wanting to learn things without coercion. After one of the sessions, Zena said she was going to spend a month with her grandparents in Wisconsin and that she wanted to read War and Peace while she was there to relieve the boredom. But, she said, War and Peace was always checked out of library and, should she be lucky enough to get it, she would have to pay over-due charges upon her return. Immediately, we went to a nearby used bookstore to find a paperback copy. It cost a dollar, at the time I thought the best dollar I had ever spent (I, in my excitement, forgot the receipt for tax purposes).
That fall, she attended a fancy private high school which both of us feared would not appreciate her fully. Zena was appreciated for her stellar scholarship, but she left high school after spending the summer of her junior year at St. Johns Univesity in Maryland. I forgot to ask her if she ever graduated from high school. She studied literature and foreign languages at St. Johns, Greek and Latin too. I am not certain what is going on with her just now. Her mother told me that she was looking grant money for doctoral studies at Oxford or a few American schools. Anyhow, she returned to visit me during her freshman year in high school. She scolded me for having given her an abridged edition of War and Peace; now she would have to reread it. Who would think that someone would dare to abridge War and Peace? Certainly, it never entered my mind. Zena trusted me since I railed against abridged books in all of the classes I taught. I had, through eagerness or sloth, committed a grievous sin which should not be forgiven. That careless act bothered me greatly, and my feeble response was that she and War and Peace will both be different when she re-reads it at later stages of her life. It is close to impossible to convey to a 13 year old, even one of Zena's quality, that time passes and we all grow and change. I was simply contrite and accepted my mistake as a lesson never to be repeated.
The clouds of Prague again showered upon us, so we continued drinking our beer inside the cafe. Somehow, we managed to take some pictures together to prove that this happy accidental meeting was not an hallucination. We had another half hour to spend talking before walking to mass. Zena did not need to remind me that she had been introduced to Gregorian Chant in my class on the Middle Ages and that the Latin mass she was planning to attend was to be sung. (Please understand that this was well before Chant had hit the pop music charts in Europe and America. I started the St. Cecilia Society for the Preservation and Restoration of Gregorian Chant and Peking Opera at my coffee house the Caffe Pergolesi in 1974. Our group has been singing for over 20 years and continues to attract men who love the music but cannot abide the theology of the Church. We sing for the simple pleasure of it, and, on occasion, once or twice a year, perform at colleges, book shops or churches. Twice the proceeds were donated to Planned Parenthood, undoubtedly the only time in history that Gregorian Chant was sung to support birth control.) But, again I digress. Suffice it to say that chant is something I know about and cherish enough to teach something of it to all of my students. We walked in the rain with Zena, who is a nominal Jew, for her first Latin mass. In the Baroque splendor of St. Joseph church the mass progressed as a dress up pageant that was visually stimulating, if bordering on the pagan. The music, however, lacked the passion necessary for transcendence. Is transcendence possible given the technological barrier of amplification? I think not. The cantor had a good voice, but seemed to be just going through the motions. The choir didn't seem attentive, had sloppy timing and careless enunciation, consequently the music suffered. I was distracted somewhat because I was preparing the text of my confession to Zena. I no longer confess my sins to a priest and the monumental sin of giving an abridged book to a trusting child would hardly pique the interest most priests, so it made sense to me to confess to Zena and ask for absolution and her forgiveness. During the communion I whispered to Zena and Judy the following: "Zena, please absolve me of my most grievous sin, with Judy as my witness, in this overly beautiful supposedly holy place, in the presence of a nonexistent blind God. I thank the true gods of chance for our fortuitous encounter which provides me with the opportunity to beg your forgiveness for mistakenly giving you an abridged copy of War and Peace many years ago. I have honestly suffered the burden of this sin and, with your blessing, I promise never to do it again. Here, in Kafka's city, my request seems somehow appropriate. Thank you." Zena forgave me during the ceremony which involved the kissing of a holy relic. After mass, as a kind of penance, we took her out to dinner near her friends' apartment. However, for some reason that escapes me, we did not eat at the restaurant marked with a 6 foot high polished aluminum sign in the shape of a cockroach. It might have been a sign.
The last time I saw Zena, about two years after our Prague meeting, her pallor indicated that she was doing too much reading. So, what do you mean when you say kids don't read much any more? I feel guilty no longer having expiated my sin, which was, after all, an unintentional act of carelessness.
Note: Somehow, work at getting thee to a monastery in France to hear real chant. DON'T FORGET THAT ZENA WILL RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2008
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