Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (101 page)

Mr. Penshian
taught eighth-grade science at my junior high school and also coached the high
school soccer team. He was a quirky guy with a beard, beady eyes, and no sense
of humor. And despite that, we loved him. He treated us like young adults
instead of children. During an illness, Mr. Penshian had an elderly gentlemen
come in as a long-term substitute. This guy wielded detention slips like the
executioner’s blade. When he gave my friends and me one for talking, we marched
down to the principal’s office and refused to serve it. The vice principal
called our parents, and we spent the afternoon in detention.

Mr. Gillenhall
was most likely gay, but you could not possibly be an openly gay public high
school teacher in the late 1980s. This was a time when Sebastian Bach thought
it would be funny to wear a shirt that said, “AIDS kills fags dead.” In a
bitter, ironic twist, that same disease took a number of his hair metal
brethren to an early grave. Mr. Gillenhall taught computer class. At the time,
that meant making a stupid fucking turtle move across the screen, sometimes
turning at ninety-degree angles. Yeah, programming class.

My most beloved
teacher had to be Professor John Henry Smith (no, not his real name, duh) at
the University of Pittsburgh. The archetype for the “crazy professor,” the man
became a legend amongst the undergraduate history students. For starters, he
had the coolest three-name name since Alexander Graham Bell. Professor clocked
in at about two-sixty and stood no more than five-foot ten. He had a potbelly,
a big laugh, and a beard. Imagine a collegiate Santa Claus. My buddies and I
never missed a John Henry Smith lecture. He would scribble and dash on the
chalkboard as if drawing up the Manhattan Project. We laughed and drank and
laughed some more (and drank some more) recalling his lectures. John’s most
astounding superpower was the ability to return papers faster than a
locomotive. Imagine a lecture hall of sixty or seventy students. We would turn
in a five- to ten-page paper on a Tuesday, and he would return it on a
Thursday! Not only did he grade them, but he provided a typed sheet of comments
and edits with every paper. My good friend invited Smith to his wedding, and he
showed up. As far as I know, he is still teaching at Pitt and no doubt still
hammering away comments on his typewriter.

***

I have decided to create my own past and my
own future, like Ricky Gervais’ character in
The Invention of Lying
. When
you get down to it, this is what happens anyway. The study of history is
bullshit. We learn stories that have been created by the winners, often used to
further an agenda that would need to be hidden from the general public and that
changes with each generation, mostly for the better. The most important thing
to remember about teaching history is to make sure your zipper is up.

How to Avoid
Conflict Avoidance

Rob Evans is a
world-class educational consultant who has written several books. In the early
2000s I saw Rob Evans present in Nashville, where he discussed the phenomenon
of conflict avoidance in education. He began his talk by telling a story of two
businessmen sitting behind him on his flight. I will do my best to recall the
exchange, according to Dr. Evans.

“Did you see the numbers on the latest account?”

“No.
How’d we do?”

“You
blew it, Johnson. You really dropped the ball on that. It’s going to cause us a
real shitstorm.”

“It’s
not like you were much help, you son of a bitch. You left the office early last
Friday and expected me to clean up your mess.”

“Fair
enough. Get that bastard Willis on the phone and have him contact the head
office and mend some fences. We’re going to need to kiss some serious ass to
get this deal back on track.”

I doubt I have
used the exact phrasings of this conversation that I am relaying third-hand and
a decade later, but I think I have captured the essence of the exchange. Here
is how a similar conversation involving conflict might go amongst teachers,
especially at a private school.

“I know you’re really busy, Fred, but I was wondering
if we could talk for a moment.”

“I
always have time for you, Betty. What’s on your mind?”

“Well,
I have to tell you how impressed I was with the assembly your kids put on last
week. It was so age-appropriate and let the kids display their various talents.
Well done!”

“Thanks,
Betty. I couldn’t have done it without your support. The faculty is so helpful
and positive.”

“So
true. . . . Listen, Fred. I know that we all have so much to do
here and that this is not a high priority, but I was wondering if you might
consider mentioning something to your students for me?”

“Don’t
see why not. Go ahead.”

“Lately,
some of your advisees have been streaking past my room. Normally I can turn my
head and ignore their natural state. However, they’ve been stopping in front of
my room and jumping up and down, you know, their things bouncing and such.”

“Oh,
I see, Betty.”

“Do
you think you can ask them to consider their options when they decide to strip
and share their nakedness, if you have time for the discussion, of course?”

***

We are all
infants. We spit up awkward phrases and stumble through a rambling
justification of the “reply all” insult that was inadvertently sent. The lack
of etiquette in digital communications can work as a barrier against efficiency
and productivity, the two things digital communication is supposed to improve.

I went to see
the Supersuckers (“world’s greatest rock band,” according to the Supersuckers’
website) with a friend, and at the show we joked about the fact that teachers
are responsible for teaching character, and yet they abuse digital
communications themselves. Take a moment to set your email client to offline
and put the CrackBerry down. Here is a short list of helpful guidelines,
especially for those in education.

Don’t String Me Along

When a person
takes the time to email you a question, they expect an answer. Don’t be an
asshole and only answer their first question. If there is more than one, this
will almost always mean two more exchanges, which, in the long run, eat up more
of your time. Read your reply twice, and make sure you have answered all
questions, possibly anticipating follow-up questions and answering those as
well.

Reply or Die (in 24)

If your
mother-in-law forwards you a recipe for shortcake or a “joke” her priest
thought was funny, by all means, delete it. However, in the business world (including
in education) you must reply to all emails pertaining to the institution. Only
a complete douchebag does not respond to an email. Think about it. A colleague
of yours took the time to type out a message. They did not pick up the phone or
stop you in the hall. They wrote you. That deserves a reply, even if it’s, “Got
it. Busy now, but will respond later.” It took me 1.5 seconds to type that out.
Do it, you lazy bastard, and do it within twenty-four hours of receiving it.
It’s common courtesy, and if you do not respond to emails, don’t expect others
to respond to yours.

Don’t Fuck with My Head

I spent the
majority of my adult life in a drunken haze. I play heavy metal music on stage
with Marshall amps (Endorsement? Free gear? C’mon, Marshall, hook a brother up).
If you reply to an email I sent and do not have the original quoted below it, I
probably will have no clue what you are talking about. The bigger question is
why you would do such a thing. By default, most email programs include the
original email in a reply. Why would you change that setting? Are you being
charged by the word for every email you send?

Be Buddha: Lose Your
Attachments

Why are you
sending me Word documents as email attachments? For the love of God, stop. When
I see the little paperclip next to a .docx file extension, I want to puke. My
favorite is getting a Word attachment that contains a paragraph of Times New
Roman twelve-point font, the same formatting that’s in the body of the email.
Why? Email is meant to be efficient and to deliver information rapidly. If you
want me to peruse a paragraph, type it in the body of the email. Furthermore,
most email these days is formatted in HTML, which means you can send the
formatting too, if you so desire.

Large
attachments, such as movie clips or audio files, hog system resources and bog
down the email server for everyone. Put it on a shared or cloud drive (s tech
term. Nine out of ten people reading this put the book down and took a sedative)
and send an email with a shortcut to its location.

STOP DOING THIS

Got it?

Quit Being So Needy

I love nothing more than hitting the “ignore request”
button when a person sends me an email demanding a read receipt. How fucking
worried are you about my email-reading habits? Are you so insecure that you
need to know when I’ve read your shitty little message? If I don’t do what I am
supposed to do, hold my feet to the fire, but quit treating me like the fat kid
who had to have the teacher pin the note to his shirt before getting on the bus
to go home. And just so you know, most email applications allow the user to set
an automatic block on all read receipts, so suck it.

In addition,
showing me a little red exclamation point is not going to get my attention. I
scan my inbox without prejudice. Subject lines labeled, “I can see Brenda’s
panties today” get the same attention as, “Staff meeting extended until 6:00
p.m.” (I’m lying about this, but you get my point.) Sending your email as
“urgent” is only slightly less infuriating than using all caps.

Watch Your Carbon
Footprint

Back in the day
when dinosaurs ruled the earth and cavemen had to use their feet as brakes (known
as the Flintstone Stop), “carbon copies” flooded the office. You pressed really
hard on the top copy, and the carbon fiber between sheets would duplicate the
writing on subsequent pages. You could almost see it.

Nowadays, people
see the “cc” and “bcc” in their email applications and have no clue what they
mean or how to use them. Always use “cc” to cover your ass. For example, if an
angry parent demands an explanation as to why Bobby got 89 percent on his
history paper and is forever scarred, the grade keeping him out of Princeton,
reply with a “cc” to the principal or division head. This protects against an
irate mom who claims she was ignored.

When sending a
blanket email to lots of people, use “bcc.” This means that they will all get
it but will not see the other people you have emailed. I once sent a mass email
with my new email address to all of my family, friends, acquaintances, and
assholes I knew. Instead of using “bcc,” I used the “to” box. One of the
wise-guys hit “reply all” (the “reply all” section is up next) with a sexual
joke about my dead grandmother that went to all of the people that received my
first email. My mom read the joke about her dead mother. Nice.

Shout It from the
Mountaintop

If you can see
the other people who received the same email that you did, respond with “reply
all.” When someone emails to a group using the “to” box, they want everyone to
get the response, otherwise they need to have an additional email exchange with
you, which they then must share with the larger group you were supposed to
email anyways.

Breaking the Chains (Dokken
fucking rules!)

If, after
fifteen years of using email, you are still forwarding chain letters, you are a
fucking asshole. Sorry, but there is no reason to be sending this shit any
longer. Just because you think pictures of dogs dressed in people’s clothes are
funny, this does not mean everyone in your address book does, too. I refuse to
read them anymore. They get filtered to my trash and deleted daily. I don’t
want “real” pictures of UFOs flying over Seattle. I don’t want to know about
the mystery trucker who gave the retarded kid in the diner an envelope with ten
grand in it. I don’t want to know how men think differently than women about
shopping. Please cease and desist before your family stops talking to you.

Batch It

This idea came
from
The 4-Hour Workweek
, by Timothy Ferris. In the book, he suggests
batching your email as a way of increasing productivity. Love or hate Ferris,
he has golden nuggets of wisdom in the book, this being one of them.

Check your email
at noon and then four. That’s it. Set your email application to “offline,” or
keep it shut until lunch and right before you go home. Get the inbox
notification monkey off your back, and quit begging for attention like a Tiger
Woods mistress. You will find that many problems sent in emails to groups of
people resolve themselves within two or three replies. If you check into the
conversation at noon by reading the most recent “re” of the subject line, you
will most likely save yourself the time and energy of replying, as someone will
have solved the problem for you. This technique alone will allow you to recoup
an enormous amount of time in your day and free you up for other addictions,
like the CrackBerry.