Kindred Spirits. Or Not.

"Once in a generation a woman comes along who changes everything. Tina Fey is not that woman, but she met that woman once and acted weird around her." - Leading quotation from the back cover of Bossypants, also a helpful analogy for an episode in my Bryanston life.

If, in this analogy, the English Poet Laureate is "the woman who comes along and changes everything," I am Tina Fey.

A few weeks back, the school had somehow wrangled Carol Ann Duffy (current English Poet Laureate, first woman to do it) into coming and performing some of her poetry to the kids. She would also, as poets do, be eating lunch here.

As a member of the English department, I'd been encouraged to attend the lunch (a standing-up, nibbling finger food affair) and do my bit to minimize the chance of awkward silences between Bryanston and Carol Ann Duffy. The logic was that we could all "hide behind each other," which I thought a splendid idea, until I forgot.

I don't know what came over me. I'd first read and enjoyed her poetry at the tender age of two hours ago, so there was no hero-worship to blame for my enthusiasm.

I was seized, I think, by the deep-seated instinct to "Be Nice to Comp'ny." Similar to the "Don't Eat Those, They're For Comp'ny," edict, the "Be Nice" corollary dictates that one banish all concern for personal comfort in favor of welcoming the visitor. I'd internalized this rule to mean that, in these luncheon party trenches, there was a social bullet with my name on it. Ergo the second she walked into the room, I stepped forward and introduced myself.

"Hi, my name's Sarah Kate. We've both got double-barreled first names! Do people get confused with yours, too?"

A pause. If I'd been able to, I'd have clapped both hands over my mouth.

"Sometimes they drop the Ann," she replied.

"Oh, I so get that. We just can't give up though, can we?"

SHUT UP, said my brain.

And fortunately, I did shut up. We were saved by another English teacher coming over to introduce some students who were vastly more poised than I had just proven to be.

Through further chit chat, and greater filter control on my part, the lunch was redeemed, but it was a close shave.

That evening, after she had finished a performance of her poetry, the other English faculty were getting her to sign copies of her work. My head of department flipped open a just-signed copy, found a poem she liked, and chuckled to read the title out loud. She passed the book to me, and I smiled as I started reading the poem to myself.

"Well, now you have to read it to us," said her husband.
"What? No way; I can't follow that," I blurted, gesturing toward Carol Ann Duffy, who stood listening to this exchange.
"Oh, come on."

And I thought it would be childish to persist in buttoning my lip, so I just read the thing. In front of Carol Ann Duffy. Which is sort of like showing an artist a digital picture you took of their painting.

I took my leave soon after, thanking Carol Ann Duffy for her visit and pleading Chess Club as my excuse.

"Oh, a chess club. Are you any good at chess?" she asked me.
"Oh, no. Not at all. That's why I go to Chess Club," I said, idiotically. And like an awkward phantom, I was gone.


The next time I meet the English Poet Laureate, I'll think of something better to say.

OH WAIT.

So there was this wedding.

No, I didn't go to London to see it.
No, I didn't cry.
No, I wasn't clutching a bottle of Royal Wedding Special Edition Champagne when it happened.
But yes, I did squeal a little bit at the First Glimpse of That Dress

(One of the kids had informed us the First Glimpse would be possible when, according to the published itinerary, Kate left the hotel at exactly 10:51 am and got into her limousine / lucite hearse / popemobile to drive to Westminster Abbey).

For my part, I hadn't been all that jazzed about the nuptials until that fateful Friday, when you could practically feel the vibrations from fluttering teenage-girl heartstrings as you walked the corridors. It was, after all, the day Kate Middleton would become a REAL LIVE PRINCESS.

Lessons between the morning tea break and lunch had been cancelled to allow the children to watch the event on the television. A wise choice, I thought, so as to allow a communal moment of rejoicing with minimal interruption of scholarship.

Stuff that. A child walked into Julia's boarding house. "How's your morning been?" Julia asked the girl. "Great!" the girl answered brightly. "I had French. We watched the wedding."

I was informed that every minute of the morning had required at least three hours of planning in the way of security, decoration, crowd-control, altar-buffing, carriage-restoration, and the like. Of course most of us were going to take all morning to watch the thing. It would have seemed rude not to. After all, the girls chattered, it's the future King and Queen, the capital city's looking its stately best, and did I mention she's going to be a PRINCESS?

To observe the event-around-the-event, Julia and I went to her boarding house common room. We were surrounded on the one side by a table full of fairy cakes and the cleaning ladies busily judging Camilla Barker-Bowles. On our other side were couches crammed full of teenage girls all agog at the spectacle. Julia bustled around, chronicling the event with her camera while I observed the bunting and paper hearts that the girls had hung around the room.

Of course, the boys were all outside at this point. You know, shooting things and playing rugby and and rubbing dirt in their wounds. Being guys. Not caring at all about this froo-froo wedding business.

Except they weren't. Their boarding-houses, too, had jam-packed common rooms, where apparently hordes watched the wedding with equal avidity.

However, when asked by one of their male teachers why they were so attentive, the boys' interest was a bit less elaborately justifiable.

"She's fit, sir."
"And so's her sister," they widely agreed after both women walked down the aisle.

I had never seen anything like it. I can't remember a Super Bowl that ever got this much attention. Maybe that's why I had approached the event like a bit of a grinch, wondering, really, what all the fuss was about. People got married all the time.

But the kids were just too excited. There was just too much jam and clotted cream in the fairy cakes. Too many fancy hats. Too much red carpet. In a voyeuristic sugar rush, I finally let myself get swept away. And it was so fun, and the dress was gorgeous; I don't care what anyone says.

So on this day, I wish a happy one-month wedding anniversary to what the tabloids have dubbed "Wills and Kate." May their love endure much longer than their honeymoon tans.

Forgive me

Yes, yes, I know. I realize I've been a delinquent. I offer no excuses, only updates.

Since last I wrote the weather has improved and my mandolin skills have declined, each with equal sharpness. The sky remains light until nine in the evening, making it a pleasure indeed to stroll the Bryanston grounds and neglect indoor pursuits.

Even the week where my boarding house was on "School Duty" was pleasant because of the weather.

NB: School Duty is the week where you and the other faculty attached to your boarding house police the dining hall queue, provide supervision of school activities, and trawl the nooks and crannies of the school's acreage for smokers.

With the weather so mild, I could complete my patrolling of said smokers' favorite hideouts in relative comfort. I'd go out accompanied by the scent of fresh-mown grass and encounter the scent of tobacco; I'd begin my walk accompanied by the sight of bluebells languidly draping the slopes and end it spying skinny-jean-clad teens scampering off into the dusk. Better luck next time, I'd think.

Whenever I did manage to corner them, the smokers seemed less embittered than usual to be caught and have their lighters confiscated. The sunshine had lulled them into apathy even over losing six quid in good German tobacco.

Meanwhile, I'm tackling Twelfth Night with my English class.

I welcome the practical grind of constant resistance to Shakespeare. The kids walk in with that special thousand-yard stare they acquire from reading Elizabethan blank verse, saying "I read the whole act. I'm still so confused." I mentally steeple my fingers and think: Excellent. Here we go.

On good days it's hilarious and fun. On difficult days it's like herding cats, then training those cats to perform Swan Lake.

But it's Summer Term. The weather is fine, and I'm doing what I ought. Call me spoiled, and you'd be close; call me blessed, and you'd be right on the money.

So That's How Shakespeare Did It

Try teaching a group of thirteen year olds about poetry. At least one of them will boldly declare it boring before you can say "iambic pentameter."

Or perhaps I was just being too ambitious, trying to teach them about the concept of "Carpe Diem" without playing a clip from Dead Poet's Society. Instead we were reading Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which of course is quite old and therefore (they believe) entirely irrelevant to them.

But this poem has one of the most well-known couplets of all time ("But at my back I always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near"), so I thought I might as well introduce them. Famous poem, meet reticent teens. Reticent teens, meet a poem that is saucier than it sounds.

The children eventually cottoned on to the fact that there's some quite racy stuff in there, you know, breasts et cetera, so they were willing to hang on for a while.

(Not to illustrate the point, but do note line eleven, where the speaker compares his affection to a vegetable (in its slow-growing quality). It was here that one of the girls burst out, "Is he calling her a vegetable? No wonder she doesn't love him back!")

Bless them.

Check this out:

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.


When I asked, "What do we know about the speaker of this poem? For instance, how does he feel about this girl?" the kids declared him "kind of clingy." From there they were ready to move on, but I, stick-in-the-mud at your service, insisted we dwell a little longer and learn how to call it hyperbole.

I noted that Marvell had written roughly around the same time as Shakespeare (as in, the same century). One of the children asked, "So how did Shakespeare do it?" I replied, "Well, I like to think he had a lot of practice."

The child thought about this, then shook his head.

"I think he was just lucky."

As if Shakespeare happened on every sonnet in the same way you'd find a five-dollar-bill in your trouser pocket, folded and crisp from the wash. Oh, I thought. We have a long way to go. Our vegetable knowledge of poetry may (or may not) grow vaster than empires, and will certainly do so more slow.

Speaking of lucky, though - yeah, I feel that.

"I'm Saving the World One Fake Eyelash at a Time"

I have to credit Julia with that one.

Thus far that evening, we had stood sentinel by tables of sixteen-year-olds and told them they could go and get their dinner now. We had cleared their plates as they'd craned their necks impatiently toward the desserts. We had whisked away the precious cans of beer they had been allowed to drink prior to dancing.

If you've ever been compelled by your job description to stand on the outskirts of a school dance, you've borne witness to that excruciatingly transparent combination of boredom, social anxiety, and frantic thirst for being noticed. Being "an active adult presence" as we were that night can be translated as "killjoy" or "birth control" depending on where you are, but here I think our role here was "witness to awkwardness, complete with music we don't know."


The girls greeted each other in sky-high heels with kisses on both cheeks, as if they hadn't seen each other mere hours before in Biology class. They swarmed the table where drinks were being served, pretending with all their might that it was a cocktail party with an open bar. They winked at each other over the hors d'oeuvres. The boys finished their drinks too quickly.

Now, I should count myself fortunate that that all I had to do was be present in case of untoward behaviour.

A visiting friend of another teacher was saying that the worst night of his life (I think he dropped that distinction none too casually) was when he was forced to stand in the middle of a mass of teenagers at a similar gala-type event. As they say, Cringe. All I had to do was linger on the fringes and that was enough.

But back to the eyelashes. Apparently the false kind have become popular enough that a girl had purchased a pair for this very special evening. Much to her chagrin, one had come loose from her eyelid, perhaps while she was whipping her hair (though much to my chagrin the DJ did not play Willow Smith's insta-hit Whip My Hair, viewable here). I gather it freed itself in a manner that fairly common, but the situation was no less emergent for its predictability.

Julia came instantly to the rescue and helped this poor girl limp to the loos, where she would hopefully gather up the remaining shreds of her dignity, or just stick the thing back onto her eyelid. I sincerely hope it was the latter, and that eyelashes a-dangle aren't the sort of thing you talk about in therapy twelve years down the road. I wouldn't know, I thought as Julia ushered the afflicted girl down the corridor; when I was in high school they weren't quite as popular.

And it was at that moment that I realized I had arrived on the other side. I had fully inhabited my role as chaperone. Awkward teacher. Oblivious to the fake eyelash trend. Adult (cue heavenly music).

And I was breathing a sigh of relief that I did not have to the do the pounding-music / crowded dance floor thing anymore if I didn't want to. Back in high school, it was an obligation. Now that I'm what my father terms a GAW (a grown-ass woman; say it with a twang), I can do what I like. Which, in this case, would be literally anything but losing my fake eyelashes to an ill-timed hair toss.

My very own eyelashes, and not an awkward prom in sight.

The blessings do pile up.

Freestyle (Not About Rap)

I don't think I meant to be contrary as a very small child, but it just so happened I hated at least two things: liquefied foods (I had sneered at pureed carrots and had moved straight on to cheerios) and getting my face wet.

So when my mother took me to swim lessons at the local YMCA, I quickly became the most difficult pupil some poor high school girl had ever coached. Actually, not coached - make that coaxed, wheedled, cajoled, and begged to go underwater. I wasn't having any of it. I had willingly donned those inflatable wings for the first four years of my life; I saw no reason to give in to gravity and submerge myself if I was strong enough to keep my eyes out of the chlorine (and by strong enough, I mean stubborn enough to hold onto the edge).

The only concession to my policy happened upon seeing a favorite baby-sitter called Suzy teaching a group across the pool. I bartered with my exasperated coach to let me switch groups. She allowed this on one condition: that I go underwater at least once. I gritted my teeth and did it, but only because I knew that Suzy waited for me and would not be so Mean / Cruel / Unfair as to make me learn to simulate drowning. And I was right. I switched groups, lessons were soon over, and I escaped without sticking my face into the dreaded deep.

That's all to say that I had made it through life until this past Wednesday not knowing how to swim. Not really. You could have thrown me in a lake and I wouldn't have drowned; I could have flailed towards a ladder; in a pinch I could have treaded water for as long as you liked. But I couldn't breathe regularly while moving in a straight line.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose, before I became envious of all those lucky saps who could do such things. But how had they learned? They couldn't seem to remember not knowing. When I asked my swim-capable colleagues during dinner at what age they'd learned, they breezily reminisced, "oh, about four or five."

Thinking back to my four-year-old self cutting deals with high school volunteers so that I could specifically avoid learning to swim, I wondered what my colleagues' teachers' approach had been.

"My friends just chucked me in the pool and would push me back in every time I tried to climb out."
"Yeah. I think my parents just shoved me in the water. I eventually started moving."

Well, fine. Evidently, at four, I had misinterpreted the normal way of teaching a child to swim as semi-traumatic poolside abandon and, rather than submit, had weaseled my way out of it. I'm willing to admit when I've been wrong. Plus, as I say, I was getting envious of all those people slicing their way through the water, emerging with a healthful glow one never achieves in sweaty running clothes. So I asked Bryanston's swim coach to teach me how to do the front crawl or whatever it's called.

The first time, I choked and sputtered and forgot to exhale and all that stuff. Andy took a look at my attempt to swim a length and said, "Why don't we just try your swimming a width?" That's how bad it was. But eventually, the breathing and the arm-flinging, the kicking and the head-turning sort of settled into a rhythm, and at this point (four swims later) I feel much more comfortable in the water.

I'm not quite slicing down the lane in the manner of a Bryanston Barracuda, and I don't think goggled and swim-capped is my best look. But my wheeling-and-dealing four-year-old self can take a hike, because now I know better.