A while back I read an article written by Holly Zachariah of the Columbus Dispatch that made me smile and for more than one reason. It was a human-interest story, the type that’s supposed to buoy our spirits and make us forget about depressing COVID issues and rigidly partisan politics where nothing ever seems to get done that will satisfy everyone.
The story’s headline (“Thurber Dog Muggs is getting his due”) immediately took me back to my teaching days and one of the anthologies I was provided to teach a curriculum that included our country’s greatest writers to my juniors.
In the back of that anthology was a printing of one of Ohio born-and-raised James Thurber’s best works, his autobiography, “My Life and Hard Times,” which chronicles his days growing up in Columbus. While some authors were more challenging to teach, I was always immensely excited to teach this nine-chapter comedic recollection of Thurber’s early years. For my money, it’s the finest example of 20th century American humor ever written. Each chapter is its own separate vignette, reading like a short story, including the tale about Muggs, entitled “The Dog That Bit People.”
Zachariah’s news story was about a long-delayed monument and sculpture of Muggs which was placed this past summer in the Thurber family plot in Green Lawn Cemetery, a private historical cemetery in Columbus. The memorial of the irascible Airedale terrier that was beloved by Thurber’s mother for all of the 11 years of the dog’s life, perhaps because she was the only one the dog didn’t bite at one time or another, fulfilled a posthumous wish by Agnes Mary “Mame” Thurber to have the dog remembered in perpetuity.
Well, that human-interest story certainly stimulated my hippocampus, flooding the part of the brain that stores our memories, with recollections of teaching that book. Because of the self-contained nature of each chapter, with each telling its own somewhat-exaggerated tale, it was pretty easy for even my most attention-challenged teens to stay with the storylines of the brief narratives.
The one memory that is most salient about teaching that book may well be my favorite in all my 32 years of teaching.
Reading the story about Muggs finally getting his due, I thought of a memorable former student, one who has made quite a name for himself for many years now at my alma mater, Miami University. Dr. Thomas Poetter has been a full professor there for several years and specializes in curriculum development. He is a multi-published author in addition to chairing the school’s Department of Educational Leadership.
But once upon a 1980, long before his undergraduate degree at Heidelberg College, his master’s degree at Princeton or his doctoral work at Indiana University, Poetter was just Tom, one of my juniors who excelled both in the classroom, on the baseball diamond and especially on the basketball floor, where the point guard was terrific at setting up future University of Dayton star Damon Goodwin with beautiful pocket-pass assists and equally terrific at the foul line.
My memory of Tom was of a day when we had just finished a discussion of one of the chapters from Thurber’s memoir and, as I often did, I gave the class the last 15 minutes to begin the reading of the next assigned chapter. As the class settled in and there was dead quiet, I returned to my latest stack of papers to grade at the big desk in the front of the room. Then, I heard it, a snort, a sure sign of one of the things teachers dread the most, suppressed laughter at inappropriate times.
To a male teacher, suppressed laughter can only be a sign of two things, either his fly is down or some shenanigans are brewing. Now, since I’d already sat down, I knew it couldn’t be the former, so I assumed the latter.
When I looked up, I saw Tom, eyes still glued to the page trying so very hard to harness the brewing laughter and oblivious to the bemused looks of his peers staring at him.
When Tom’s laughter finally burst forth and he realized the distraction he was causing, he instantly rose and trotted out of the classroom and into the hall to compose himself.
In a career filled with largely pleasant memories with my young people, that’s my golden moment. You see, Tom wasn’t one to bring undue attention to himself, so his laughter came from a genuine place and was the manifestation of what I wanted my students to experience, the sheer joy of reading.
Thank you, Holly Zachariah of the Columbus Dispatch, for writing that story about Muggs’ finally getting his due, one that reminded me of a wonderful moment from my teaching past.
And, of course, thank you, Dr. Thomas Poetter of Miami University, for, on an early spring day in 1980 starting with a snicker that became a snort that birthed a belly laugh in Room 16 of the first Memorial High School, the one that no longer blocks the view of the football stadium on West South Street in St. Marys.
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