Recently,
while poring over miscellaneous scraps of paper from my past, I chanced upon an
eighth-grade history test consisting of both a matching column and "True
or False" section. Mr. Collins handwrote the test in cursive and had it mimeographed.
That was the 1970s technology. One True or False question posited: “In 1924 the
first pizza parlor in America was opened by Sacco and Vanzetti?” I am proud to
report that I answered it correctly as well as the previous question: “The
1920’s was a time of great hardship and depression?” As for the Sacco and
Vanzetti reference, Mr. Collins, I suspect, would have to think twice today
about associating an Italian surname with pizza pie. Somebody might turn him in
for the offense—but, probably not, it is only the Italians after all. Then again,
everything is so standardized in the here and now that a Mr. Collins-style
history test—called "Social Studies" back then—would never
reach the modern-day equivalent of a mimeograph machine.
Another
snippet of paper in my archives was a handwritten summary of the "Best of
Mr. O’Brien," my geometry teacher at Cardinal Spellman High School. While
I did not care much for the subject matter, Mr. O’Brien was a true original—both
an able teacher and talented performance artist. When the school year ended,
and he informed his students that he would not be returning in the fall—he got
a better offer—I recall being profoundly saddened to think that I would never,
ever see him again. His lectures were delightfully frenetic, and he loved
nothing more than having fun with people’s names—both their first and their
last. He was an Irishman who, more than anything else, relished calling on kids
with multi-syllabic Italian surnames. There was a fair share of them in my high school back then. Somebody named Provenzano, for instance, had his
name pronounced in a melodious singsong: “Pro-ven-zan-o.” He liked one-syllable
names, too. A kid named “Bell,” I remember, rang well in the classroom.
From where
I—and everybody else—sat, Mr. O'Brien's class was where entertainment met
education, and his antics did not offend. In fact, his students coveted inclusion
in the give-and-take. "Oh, Nick...oh, Nick," is in my notes, so I was
indeed, although the context now eludes me. In fact, more than three decades have
passed since the Mr. O'Brien hour and—sad to report—all too many people are conditioned to
be offended for one reason or another. Quite possibly, Mr. O’Brien had
to clean up his act at some point in his teaching career, if that is where he
pitched his job tent. (He was in his mid-twenties, I'd guess, when I knew him.) If this is indeed what happened, the irony is that some of his students from the 1970s—who
admired him—did him in as the humorless, uptight adults they became.
(Photo
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
