Me and Miss Mandible
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13 SeptemberMiss Mandible wants to make love to me but she hesitates because I am officially a child; I am, acc to the records, acc to the gradebook on her desk, acc to the card index in the principals office, eleven years old. There is a misception here, ohat I havent quite mao get cleared up yet. I am in fact thirty-five, Ive been in the Army, I am six feet one, I have hair in the appropriate places, my voice is a baritone, I know very well what to do with Miss Mandible if she ever makes up her mind.
In the meantime we are studying on fras. I could, of course, answer all the questions, or at least most of them (there are things I dont remember). But I prefer to sit in this too-small seat with the desktop cramping my thighs and examihe life arouhere are thirty-two in the class, which is launched every m with the pledge of allegiao the flag. My own allegia the moment, is divided between Miss Mandible and Sue Ann Brownly, who sits across the aisle from me all day long and is, like Miss Mandible, a fool for love. Of the two I prefer, today, Sue Ann; although between eleven and eleven and a half (she refuses to reveal her exact age) she is clearly a woman, with a womans disguised aggression and a eculiar tradis. Strangely her she nor any of the other childreo see any ingruity in my presence here.
15 September
Happily eography text, which tains maps of all the principal land-masses of the world, is large enough to ceal my destine journal-keeping, aplished in an ordinary blaposition book. Every day I must wait until Geography to put down such thoughts as I may have had during the m about my situation and my fellows. I have tried writing at other times and it does not work. Either the teacher is walking up and down the aisles (during this period, luckily, she sticks close to the map ra the front of the room) or Bobby Vanderbilt, who sits behind me, is pung me in the kidneys and wanting to know what I am doing. Vanderbilt, I have found out from certaiory versations on the playground, is hung up on sports cars, a veteran er of Road & Track. This explains the tinual r sounds which seem to emanate from his desk; he is reprodug a record album called Sounds of Sebring.
19 September
Only I, at times (only at times), uand that somehow a mistake has been made, that I am in a place where I dont belong. It may be that Miss Mandible also knows this, at some level, but for reasons not fully uood by me she is going along with <df</dfn>the game. When I was first assigo this room I wao protest, the error seemed obvious, the stupidest principal could have seen it; but I have e to believe it was deliberate, that I have beerayed again.
Now it seems to make little differehis life-role is as iing as my former life-role, which was that of a claims adjuster for the Great Northern Insuranpany, a position whipelled me to spend my time amid the debris of our civilization:></a> rumpled fenders, roofless sheds, gutted warehouses, smashed arms and legs. After ten years of this one has a tendency to see the world as a vast junkyard, looking at a man and seeing only his (potentially) mangled parts, entering a house only to trace the path of the iable fire. Therefore when I was installed here, although I knew an error had been made, I te, I was shrewd; I was aware that there might well be some kind of advao be gained from what seemed a disaster. The role of The Adjuster teaches one much.
22 September
I am being solicited for the volleyball team. I dee, refusing to take unfair profit from my height.
23 September
Every m the roll is called: Bestvina, Bokenfohr, Broan, Brownly, e, Coyle, Crecelius, Darin, Durbin, Geiger, Guiswite, Heckler, Jacobs, Kleinschmidt, Lay, Logan, Masei, Mitgang, Pfeilsticker. It is like the litany ted in the dim miserable dawns of Texas by the cadre sergeant of our basic training pany.
In the Army, too, I was ever so slightly awry. It took me a fantastically long time to realize what the rasped almost at ohat much of what we were doing was absolutely pointless, to no purpose. I kept w why. Then something happehat proposed a new question. One day we were ao whitewash, from the ground to the topmost leaves, all of the trees in our training area. The corporal who relayed the order was nervous and apologetic. Later an off-duty captain sauntered by and watched us, white-splashed and totally weary, strung out among the freakish shapes we had created. He walked away swearing. I uood the principle (orders are orders), but I wondered: Who decides?
29 September
Sue Ann is a wonder. Yesterday she viciously kicked my ankle for not paying attention when she was attempting to pass me a note during History. It is swollen still. But Miss Mandible was watg me, there was nothing I could do. Oddly enough Sue Ann reminds me of the wife I had in my former role, while Miss Mandible seems to be a child. She watches me stantly, trying to keep sexual significe out of her look; I am afraid the other children have noticed. I have already heard, on that ghostly frequency that is the medium of classroom unication, the words "Teachers pet!"
2 October
Sometimes I speculate on the exaature of the spiracy which brought me here. At times I believe it was instigated by my wife of former days, whose name was. . . I am only pretending tet. I know her name very well, as well as I know the name of my former motor oil (Quaker State) or my old Army serial number (US 54109268). Her name was Brenda, and the versation I recall best, the one which makes me suspicious now, took pla the day we parted. "You have the soul of a whore," I said on that occasion, stating nothihan literal, unvarnished fact. "You," she replied, "are a pimp, a poop, and a child. I am leaving you forever and I trust that without me you will perish of your own inadequacies. Which are siderable."
I squirm in my seat at the memory of this versation, and Sue Ann watches me with malign passion. She has noticed the discrepancy between the size of my desk and my own size, but apparently sees it only as a token of my glamour, my dark man-of-the-world-ness.
7 October
Oiptoed up to Miss Mandibles desk (when there was no one else in the room) and examis surface. Miss Mandible is a -desk teacher, I discovered. There was nothing except her gradebook (the one in which I exist as a sixth-grader) and a text, which en at a page headed Making the Processes Meaningful. I read: "Many pupils enjoy w fras when they uand what they are doing. They have fiden their ability to take the right steps and to obtain correswers. However, to give the subject full social significe, it is necessary that many realistic situations requiring the processes be found. Many iing and lifelike problems involving the use of fras should be solved. . ."
8 October
I am not irritated by the feeling of havihrough all this before. Things are done differently now. The children, moreover, are in some ways different from those who apanied me on my first voyage through the elementary schools: "They have fiden their ability to take the right steps and to obtain correswers." This is surely true. When Bobby Vanderbilt, who sits behind me and has the great tactical advantage of being able to maneuver in my disproportionate shadow, wishes to bust a classmate in the mouth he first asks Miss Mandible to lower the blind, saying that the sun hurts his eyes. When she does so, bip! My geion would never have been able to authority so easily.
13 October
It may be that on my first trip through the schools I was too muder the impression that what the authorities (who decides?) had ordained for me was right and proper, that I fused authority with life itself. My path was not particularly of my own choosing. My career stretched out in front of me like a paper chase, and my role was to pick up the clues. When I got out of school, the first time, I felt that this estimate was substantially correct, and eagerly ehe hunt. I found clues abundant: diplomas, membership cards, campaign buttons, a marriage lise, insurans, discharge papers, tax returns, Certificates of Merit. They seemed to prove, at the very least, that I was in the running. But that was before my tragic mistake on the Mrs. Anton Bichek claim.
I misread a clue. Do not misua was a tragedy only from the point of view of the authorities. I ceived that it was my duty to obtain satisfa for the injured, for this elderly lady (not even one of our policyholders, but a claimant against Big Ben Transfer & Ste, Inc.) from the pany. The settlement was $165,000; the claim, I still believe, was just. But without my encement Mrs. Bichek would never have had the self-love to prize her injury so highly. The pany paid, but its faith in me, in my effica the role, was broken. Henry Goodykind, the district manager, expressed this thought in a few not altogether unsympathetic words, and told me at the same time that I was to have a new role. The hing I knew I was here, at Horace Greeley Elementary, uhe lubricious eye of Miss Mandible.
17 October
Today we are to have a fire drill. I know this because I am a Fire Marshal, not only for our room but for the entire right wing of the sed floor. This distin, which was awarded shortly after my arrival, is interpreted by some as another mark of my somewhat dubious relations with our teacher. My armband, which is red and decorated with white felt letters reading FIRE, sits otle shelf藏书网 under my desk, o the broer bag taining the lunch I carefully make for myself each m. One of the advantages of pag my own lunch (I have no oo pack it for me) is that I am able to fill it with things I enjoy. The peanut butter sandwiches that my mother made in my former existence, many years ago, have been banished in favor of ham and cheese. I have found that my diet has mysteriously adjusted to my new situation; I no longer drink, for instance, and when I smoke, it is in the boys john, like everybody else. When school is out I hardly smoke at all. It is only iter of sex that I feel my own true age; this is apparently something that, once learned, ever be fotten. I live ihat Miss Mandible will one day keep me after school, and when we are alone, create a promising situation. To avoid this I have bee a model pupil: another reason for the pronounced dislike I have entered iain quarters. But I ot deny that I am singed by those long glances from the viity of the chalkboard; Miss Mandible is in many ways, notably about the bust, a very tasty piece.
24 October
There are is<samp>..</samp>olated challeo my largeness, to my dimly realized position in the class as Gulliver. Most of my classmates are polite about this matter, as they would be if I had only one eye, or wasted, metal-ed legs. I am viewed as a mutation of some sort but essentially a peer. However Harry Broan, whose father has made himself rich manufacturing the Broan Bathroom Vent (with which Harry is frequently reproached; he is always being asked how things are isville), today inquired if I wao fight. An ied group of his followers had gathered to observe this suicidal uaking. I replied that I didnt feel quite up to it, for which he was obviously grateful. We are now friends forever. He has giveo uand privately that he get me all the bathroom vents I will ever need, at a ridiculously modest figure.
25 October
"Many iing and lifelike problems involving the use of fras should be solved. . ." The theorists fail to realize that everything that is either iing or lifelike in the classroom proceeds from what they would probably call interpersonal relations: Sue Ann Brownly kig me in the ankle. How lifelike, how womanlike, is her tender solicitude after the deed! Her pride in my newly acquired limp is transparent; everyone knows that she has set her mark upohat it is a victory in her unequal struggle with Miss Mandible for my great, row. Even Miss Mandible knows, and ters in perhaps the only way she , with sarcasm. "Are you wounded, Joseph?" flagrations smolder behind her eyelids, yearning for the Fire Marshal clouds her eyes. I mumble that I have bumped my leg.
30 October
I return again and again to the problem of my future.
4 November
The underground circulating library has brought me a copy of Movie-TV Secrets, the multicolor cover blazoned with the headline "Debbies Date Insults Liz!" It is a gift from Frankie Randolph, a rather plain girl who until today has had not one word for me, passed on via Bobby Vanderbilt. I nod and smile over my shoulder in aowledgment; Frankie hides her head under her desk. I have seen these magazines being passed around among the girls (sometimes one of the boys will desd to i a particularly lurid cover). Miss Mandible fiscates them whenever she finds one. I leaf through Movie-TV Secrets a an eyeful. "The exclusive picture on these pages isnt what it seems. We know how it looks and we know what the gossipers will do. So ierests of a nice guy, were publishing the facts first. Heres what really happened!" The picture shows a rising young movie idol in bed, pajama-ed and bleary-eyed, while an equally blowzy young woman looks startled beside him. I am happy to know that the picture is not really what it seems; it seems to be nothihan divorce evidence.
What do these hipless eleven-year-olds think when they e across, in the same magazihe full-page ad for Maurice de Paree, which features "Hip Helpers" or pear to be padded rumps? ("A real undercent that adds appeal to those hips and derriere, both!") If they ot decipher the language the illustrations leave nothing to the imagination. "Drive him frantic. . ." the copy tinues. Perhaps this explains Bobby Vanderbilts preoccupation with Lancias and Maseratis; it is a defense against being driven frantic.
Sue Ann has observed Frankie Randolphs overture, and catg my eye, she pulls from her satchel haeen of these magazihrusting them at me as if to prove that anything any of her rivals has to offer, she top. I shuffle through them quickly, noting the broad editorial perspective:
"Debbies Kids Are g"
"Eddie Asks Debbie: Will You. . . ?"
"The Nightmares Liz Has About Eddie!"
"The Things Debbie Tell About Eddie"
"The Private Life of Eddie and Liz"
"Debbie Gets Her Man Back?"
"A New Life for Liz"
"Love Is a Tricky Affair"
"Eddies Taylor-Made Love "
"How Liz Made a Man of Eddie"
"Are They Planning to Live Together?"
"Isnt It Time to Stop Kig Debbie Around?"
"Debbies Dilemma"
"Eddie Bees a Father Again"
"Is Debbie Planning to Re-wed?"
" Liz Fulfill Herself?"
"Why Debbie Is Sick of Hollywood"
Who are these people, Debbie, Eddie, Liz, and how did they get themselves in such a terrible predit? Sue Ann knows, I am sure; it is obvious that she has been studying their history as a guide to what she may expect when she is suddenly freed from this drab, flat classroom.
I am angry and I shove the magazines back at her with not even a whisper of thanks.
5 November
The sixth grade at Horace Greeley Elementary is a furnace of love, love, love. Today it is raining, but ihe air is heavy and teh passion. Sue Ann is absent; I suspect that yesterdays exge has driveo her bed. Guilt hangs about me. She is not responsible, I know, for what she reads, for the models proposed to her by a venal publishing industry; I should not have been so harsh. Perhaps it is only the flu.
Nowhere have I entered an atmosphere as charged with aborted sexuality as this. Miss Mandible is helpless; nothing ght today. Amos Darin has been found drawing a dirty picture in the cloakroom. Sad and inaccurate, it was offered not as a sign of something else but as an act of love in itself. It has excited even those who have not seen it, even those who saw but uood only that it was dirty. The room buzzes with imperfectly preheitillation. Amos stands by the door, waiting to be taken to the principals office. He wavers between fear and enjoyment of his temporary celebrity. From time to time Miss Mandible looks at me reproachfully, as if blaming me for the uproar. But I did not create this atmosphere, I am caught in it like all the others.
8 November
Everything is promised my classmates and I, most of all the future. t the eous assurances without<bdi></bdi> blinking.
9 November
I have finally found the o petition for a larger desk. At recess I hardly walk; my legs do not wish to uncoil themselves. Miss Mandible says she will take it up with the custodian. She is worried about the excelleny themes. Have I, she asks, been receiving help? For an instant I am on the brink of telling her my story. Something, however, war to attempt it. Here I am safe, I have a place; I do not wish to entrust myself once more to the whimsy of authority. I resolve to make my themes less excellent iure.
11 November
A ruined marriage, a ruined adjusting career, a grim interlude in the Army when I was almost not a person. This is the sum of my existeo date, a dismal total. Small wohat re-education seemed my only hope. It is clear even to me that I need rew in some fual way. How effit is the society that provides thus for the salvage of its kers!
Plucked from my unexamined life among other pleasant, desperate, money-making young Ameris, thrown backward in spad time, I am beginning to uand how I went wrong, how we all g. (Although this was far from the iion of those who sent me here; they require only that I get right.)
14 November
The distin between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
15 November
The custodian has informed Miss Mandible that our desks are all the correct size for sixth-graders, as specified by the Board of Estimate and furhe schools by the Nu-Art Educational Supply Corporation of Englewood, California. He has pointed out that if the desk size is correct, then the pupil size must be incorrect. Miss Mandible, who has already arrived at this clusion, refuses to press the matter further. I think I know why. An appeal to the administration might result in my removal from the class, in a trao some sort of setup for "exceptional children." This would be a disaster of the first magnitude. To sit in a room with child geniuses (or, more likely, children who are "retarded") would shrivel me in a week. Let my experience here be that of the on run, I say; let me be, please God, typical.
20 November
We read signs as promises. Miss Mandible uands by my great height, by my resonant vowels, that I will one day carry her off to bed. Sue Ann interprets these same signs to mean that I am unique among her male acquaintaherefore most desirable, therefore her special property as is everything that is Most Desirable. If her of these propositions work out then life has broken faith with them.
I myself, in my former existence, read the pany motto ("Here to Help in Time of Need") as a description of the duty of the adjuster, drastically mislog the panys deepest s. I believed that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love. Brenda, reading the same signs that have now misled Miss Mandible and Sue Ann Brownly, felt she had been promised that she would never be bored again. All of us, Miss Mandible, Sue Ann, myself, Brenda, Mr. Goodykind, still believe that the Ameri flag betokens a kind of general righteousness.
But I say, looking about me in this incubator of future citizens, that signs are signs, and that some of them are lies. This is the great discovery of my time here.
23 November
It may be that my experience as a child will save me after all. If only I remain quietly in this classroom, making my notes while Napoleon plods through Russia in the droning voice of Harry Broan, reading aloud from our History text. All of the mysteries that perplexed me as an adult have their ins here, and one by one I am numbering them, exposing their roots.
2 December
Miss Mandible will refuse to permit me to remain ungrown. Her hands rest on my shoulders too warmly, and for too long.
7 December
It is the pledges that this place makes to me, pledges that ot be redeemed, that fuse me later and make me feel I am not getting anywhere. Everything is presented as the result of some knowable process; if I wish to arrive at fet there by way of two and two. If I wish to burn Moscow the route I must travel has already been marked out by another visitor. If, like Bobby Vanderbilt, I yearn for the wheel of the Lancia 2.4-liter coupé,1 have only to gh the appropriate process, that is, get the money. And if it is moself that I desire, I have only to make it. All of these goals are equally beautiful in the sight of the Board of Estimate; the proof is all around us, in the no-nonsense ugliness of this steel and glass building, iraightliter-of-faess with which Miss Mandible handles some of our less reputable wars. Who points out that arras sometimes slip, that errors are made, that signs are misread? "They have fiden their ability to take the right steps and to obtain correswers." I take the right steps, obtain correswers, and my wife leaves me for another man.
8 December
My enlighte is proceeding wonderfully.
9 December
Disaster once again. Tomorrow I am to be sent to a doctor, for observation. Sue Ann Brownly caught Miss Mandible and me in the cloakroom, during recess, and immediately threw a fit. For a moment I thought she was actually going to choke. She ran out of the room weeping, straight for the principals office, certain now which of us was Debbie, which Eddie, which Liz. I am sorry to be the cause of her disillusio, but I know that she will recover. Miss Mandible is ruined but fulfilled. Although she will be charged with tributing to the delinquency of a minor, she seems at peace; her promise has bee. She knows now that everything she has been told about life, about America, is true.
I have tried to vihe school authorities that I am a minor only in a very special sehat I am in fact mostly to blame -- but it does no good. They are as dense as ever. My poraries are astouhat I present myself as anything other than an i victim. Like the Old Guard marg through the Russian drifts, the class marches to the clusion that truth is punishment.
Bobby Vanderbilt has given me his copy of Sounds of Sebring, in farewell.
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