A Year of Morning Thanks

Whatchamacallits

Twice in the last 24 hours I've fielded questions from students--completely different students--about why anyone might want to be an English major. This is what they ask: "If I were, what on earth would I do with it because I sure as heck don't want to teach."

Well, thanks.

And I've got to hem and haw and spew out ye olde humanities argument, older than the hills and not something all that much different than an argument for faith: getting an English major won't secure you any job (engineering is clear across campus), but an English major will make you some kind of warm and gentle human being--simply put, a better person.

The trouble with that argument is that it always turns sour in my heart even as the words come out, because if that were true, writers wouldn't off themselves like David Foster Wallace did last week, and professors of English and teachers of language arts would all be saintly, Disney-like creatures, which, of course, they're not.

It just feels like so much empty air, especially when college education costs a gadzillion dollars.

And then, just now, I read a little poem--this morning's Writers Almanac selection:

Hardware

by Ronald Wallace

My father always knew the secret
name of everything--
stove bolt and wing nut,
set screw and rasp, ratchet
wrench, band saw, and ball--
peen hammer. He was my
tour guide and translator
through that foreign country
with its short-tempered natives
in their crewcuts and tattoos,
who suffered my incompetence
with gruffness and disgust.
Pay attention, he would say,
and you'll learn a thing or two.

Now it's forty years later,
and I'm packing up his tools
(If you know the proper
names of things you're never
at a loss) tongue-tied, incompetent,
my hands and heart full
of doohickeys and widgets,
whatchamacallits, thingamabobs.

And I send it out to one of my classes, who just ended a theme unit on heritage, roots, and rebellions, because this little gem is just sweet, don't you think? This poem is why I've been an English teacher all my life long, why I've never left the profession, why I go to work in the morning. You've just got to love it when words sing.

So this morning, I'm thankful for a little Ronald Wallace poem that came in as if out of nowhere, a little bit of heaven by way of one guy's trusting view of whatchamacallits in this often messy world.