And Here's to You, Mrs. Sexton

When I was a junior in high school I had an English teacher named Mrs. Sexton. Mrs. Sexton was one of those nervous, sensitive types who seem totally and perfectly malfitted to possibly survive daily onslaughts of teenagers. While she wasn't a bad teacher per se, she did have a tendency to end up in tears at least once over the course of a week. Such people tend to find comfort and take refuge in those who are not actively seeking their weekly humiliation, and so Mrs. Sexton, I believe, liked me.

Being, of course, an advanced English class, it follows all good sense and logic that we budding literates should read that most English of classics, Don Quixote. It has been said that Cervantes and Shakespeare both were born and both died on the exact same day. Evidently Mrs. Sexton assumed that also meant the same town.

In high school I was way oversubscribed, and while I loved to read even back then, I was too plugged in to a thousand high school activities (only some of which would have been considered illegal) to really dive into the books we were assigned. And so the time allotted to read Don Quixote came and went and I was faced with writing my book report having scanned the first three chapters or so, and having just realized that the "Cliff Notes" for the book were themselves longer than I would be able to read and plagiarize. And so I fell upon any teenager's last resort when conniving and deception won't pan out: I told her the truth. I wrote my report, puffed and padded as much as three chapters of raw material would allow, and then at the end, made my confession.

I remember the results to this day: The week following our submittals our reports were returned. Mrs. Sexton's red marks on my paper were nearly as copious as the report text itself. They spoke of my eloquence and sharp understanding of the themes and subtleties of Cervantes' work, all of which, evidently, were sufficiently distilled in the three opening chapters to make the remaining 150-odd chapters endearing, but superfluous. At the top of my page, written large, was a 97%, and at the bottom of the page, after all her notes, was her caveat: I got the A on the paper only on condition that I promised to read the novel in its entirety. She caught me after class and there extracted her pound of flesh. (Note the extra Shakespeare/Cervantes reference - no extra charge).

I swore my oath and at the time I was convinced I had successfully re-engaged the teenager's mainstay mode of veracity, and that conniving and deception had once again aptly served their purpose. But as the years progressed, my sins began to weigh heavily on my soul and though I struggled, I eventually succumbed in repentance. Over the course of several years I took up my literary lance and tilted at the windmills with the noble knight. It was not an easy sallying forth; I had to take a break between Parts 1 and 2, and by the end of it I feared I was less sane than my protagonist. But at 5:34AM this morning, after another intense all-night struggle, Don Quixote was laid to rest, and with his passing more than one chapter and fantasy promise is drawn to conclusion.