Straight Man

the thoughts in his head were composed of iron filings and he was standing too close to a magnet. He scanned the expectant faces before him and felt complete panic descend upon him. He had all he could do to find the words to excuse himself for a moment and duck out into the hall for a drink at the water fountain, his throat having become a valley of cinders. There in the dark hallway my father’s entire lecture returned to him intact, but the panic did not dissipate, so he found a nearby men’s room and drew a brown paper towel from the wall dispenser. On this dubious parchment he wrote out in longhand the first two sentences of his lecture as a hedge against repetition of the strangest event of his life, and then he returned to his classroom, not without misgivings for all his sensible precaution. There behind the lectern he unfolded his paper towel and opened his mouth to begin, only to discover that the words, the very letters the words were composed of, had become scrambled. They swam before him merrily, rearranging themselves for his entertainment. This quickly, all understanding had fled. He couldn’t have identified the letter
B
for a free trip to
Sesame Street,
this despite the fact that he had written a long chapter on that program for his book on pop culture. A new wave of panic crashed over him, and he knew there was nothing to do but plead illness, cancel class, tell students to return on Thursday, at which time he hoped to be himself
.
    Word of this incident traveled, as academic gossip always does, at warp speed. It had been an early afternoon class, and by late afternoon everyone on the faculty seemed to have heard of William Henry Devereaux’s strange paralysis at the lectern. And, as is the case with most academic gossip, most of the facts had gotten skewed. My father’s colleagues seemed confused by the fact that he was able to communicate with them in the hallways. At a department cocktail party that evening they were amazed to find him not only present but charming and eloquent on the subject of his bizarre dysfunction, turning his still fresh humiliation into a comic set piece in which he described everything swimming before his eyes, words suddenly devoid of meaning, letters of phonic significance. It was as if, he explained, he had been transported back through time to a point before the invention of written language. He had a memory of what it was and how it worked, but itall seemed rather foolish. My father’s colleagues laughed appreciatively at his recounting of the event, but he could tell that they were horrified, that what he was detailing for them was their worst nightmare come to life. Unable to
talk?
A failure of
discourse?
A confession of sexual impotence could not have struck them more forcefully, and the fact that my father was able to make light of such a circumstance elevated him, if possible, in their estimation. To be so brilliant, and yet be unable to speak. This was the stuff of classical tragedy. How wonderful that he was able to come back from hell and tell them about it. What good luck it was that his affliction was confined, apparently, to the classroom, that it did not bleed over into faculty cocktail parties
.
    Of course, the reason that my father was able to be glib and entertaining regarding his affliction was that he was convinced he’d seen the last of it. In truth he had been terrified to attend the cocktail party, afraid that he would be struck dumb there as well. What a relief to discover that his verbal acuity had not deserted him in the company of his colleagues. He had feared that his paralysis might be a manifestation of stage fright associated with the fact that he had a new job, his first in over a decade where he was expected to stay on for more than a year or two. The cocktail party suggested this was not the case, since this was the more difficult venue, and his performance here was more demanding, a poor performance judged more harshly than a botched lecture in an undergraduate classroom. Actually, he hadn’t even botched the lecture. He’d simply been unable to deliver it. No matter. He would deliver it Thursday. For the experience he was richer by one story, not poorer
.
    Except that when Thursday arrived and my father returned to class and took roll, he felt, as soon as his voice fell on the last syllable of Miss Wainwright’s name, the blind panic descend, and once again the words and letters began to rearrange themselves playfully on the