Straight Man

earlier?”
    “Some lunatic townie crashed a class. Took all her clothes off and started speaking in tongues, is what I heard.”
    “Whose class?”
    “That I didn’t hear,” he says. “Women ever take their clothes off in your classes?”
    “Never,” I admit.
    “Mine either. How about in your office?”
    “Not there either. Yours?”
    “Just once. Her.” He nods in the direction of the second Mrs. R., who’s now watching us thoughtfully and chewing on her hair. “I should have been prepared, but I wasn’t.”

CHAPTER
27
    My afternoon comp class is not persuaded. In fact, they feel ill-treated. I’ve asked their advice, in essay form, then apparently gone ahead and killed a goose before they’ve even handed their papers in. A couple of the students in this class were present for my on-camera interview this morning, at which time I did not deny that I was the perpetrator. Worse, they have heard my implied threat to continue the carnage unless I get my budget. And so they are upset with me, despite the fact that I have apparently followed the explicit advice of the majority of their essays, which I have glanced through after collecting them and separated into two unequal piles. From the larger “kill a duck” stack, I’ve read three short essays aloud, anonymously, for the purpose of inspiring discussion or, failing discussion, private misgiving. It’s my hope that if the majority of these intellectually addled young folk actually hear their words aloud, if they are forced to digest not only their advice to me but the logic that led to this advice, they will, if not change their minds, at least become acquainted with doubt.
    The three essays I have read aloud, authored by two young men and a young woman, proceed along similar lines. I should kill a duck, they argue, because I have threatened to, and if I don’t follow through, no one will ever again take my threats seriously. The writers draw foreign policy parallels. They hate it when America threatens third world nations and then, in the words of Bobo, the student I have threatened with failure if he misses another class, “pussy out.” The great thing about Desert Storm was that we said we were going to kick butt and then we kicked it. If we made a mistake, it was that we stopped kicking butt too soon. We should have kicked it all the way to Baghdad. Same way with World War II. When we were done kicking German butt, we should have kicked Russian butt and saved ourselves the necessity of kicking it later. All three writers seem to be under the impression that we did kick it later.
    I don’t need to ask my class whether they find these arguments persuasive. The more outrageous, the more historically inaccurate and fallacious the analogies, the further the essays drift from the assigned topic, the more the authors are cheered. Apparently,
some
form of persuasion has taken place here. The majority of my students have persuaded each other and themselves, and they’ve done so in such an enthusiastic and raucous fashion that they’ve effectively smothered dissent. Among my twenty-three comp students, I have a half dozen or so who are daring to frown disagreement, but that’s all they’re daring. My best student, Blair, who is pale and thin and has impossibly delicate hands with veins that are large and blue, is actually squirming in her seat, but I know from experience that she’s paralytically shy, and, perhaps because of this, she thinks it’s my job to show these louts the error of their ways. I’m the one who’s paid to be here, after all. Everyone else pays. There is some merit to this argument, though I disagree with it. Still, it probably
is
my job to start the process.
    “I’m not persuaded,” I finally tell my unworthy majority, eliciting a massive groan. They’ve suspected as much. They know me. They know that if they think one thing, I’ll think another. Their parents have agreed to pay their tuition on the condition that they major in something sensible and pay no attention to people like me, who are, they warn their kids, intent on transforming their values and undermining their religious principles. If Angelo were here, he’dassure them they’re right to be wary. Look what happened to
his
daughter.
    And of course the fact that I am not persuaded can mean only one practical thing—more bad grades. My handful of thoughtful students perk up a bit when I say I’m not persuaded, but they are aware that they are a small