The mid-nineteen-fifties were the
best of times for me because I loved the beautiful, limestone buildings and
gentle life on the sprawling green campus of Western U., but also the worst of
times because of my poor relationship to my resentful French language
professor, Dr. Jenkins. He continually picked on me as the alien in his
French class, though possibly for good reason.
Dr. J’s voice, was as gruff as his appearance. He
looked beyond retirement age. Maybe the university couldn’t find anyone pompous
enough to replace him.
There was nothing casual about him. He always wore
his long, black, professor’s robe, giving the impression that he was going to
bless us or, more likely, curse us. He was just a language professor, for
heaven’s sake, not a professor of Catholic Theology.
His mortarboard hat, firmly clamped onto his grey,
wire-haired-terrier-like, bushy hair, was pushed down hard enough to defy
Stalin’s army to dislodge it. The front point of the cap pressed down into his
forehead, making him resemble an ape or at the very leas, the comedian, Jerry
Lewis. Its tassel dangled down like a weary-laden donkey’s limp tail.
Weren’t you supposed to give those hats back right
after graduation, or pay a penalty?
His eye colour was a moot matter, maybe
heterochromian, with two different colours like a Shetland Sheepdog. His
shaggy, grey eyebrows sprang out and overhung his eyes, like frost-bitten
ivy drooping down from the top of a craggy wall.
His moustache, a small grey, prickly porcupine
clinging to his upper lip, was stained orangey-brown on one side just above
where his pipe was screwed in.
Professor Dr. J. had reluctantly allowed me into
his second year Honours French language class, but really didn’t want me there
as I hadn’t been in his first-year class. Shockingly, I’d had the audacity to
transfer from an obviously inferior, Executive Secretarial Science major. Not
fooled by the title “Science,” to him I was like a hobo crashing an elite
wedding dinner at the exclusive, London Hunt and Country Club.
So I was an interloper. The other class members,
three women, two men and a nun, had been with him the year before, were at
least a year ahead of me in knowledge, and were serious Honours students. And
they were all a year or two older than I, not counting the nun who was of
indeterminate age. The sister wore the whole nun outfit for that time: long
black habit with the white wimple headgear, opaque black hose, black army-style
Oxford boots, and the de reigueur rosary and crucifix.
Prof J. took every chance to belittle me and
nit-pick my mistakes, which were admittedly extensive.
My worst sin was not signing up for
his Summer Language course which was complete immersion into the
distinct language and culture of another province, Quebec, 1,200 km (800 miles)
away. Apparently, everyone who was serious about that second language (and also
wanted to please him), attended.
I didn’t have the money and I would have to work
in the summer tobacco harvest to help finance my next year of
college.
One particular day he came sweeping into the
classroom, wearing, as usual, his professorial black robe. Its tail almost
derailed itself, trying to avoid getting caught in the closing door. Then I
noticed something for the first time. A bit of his robe’s hem had pulled away
from the main body of the fabric, and had created a hole.
If it was my robe, and I’d had the money to buy my
own stapler, I could have temporarily repaired it. I said nothing.
He lifted his chair to position it at his desk, shoving
one leg of the chair down through the hole in his hem. As he turned to write on
the blackboard, the entrapped chair jerked and clattered along behind him, like
tin cans tied to newly-weds’ honeymoon car’s rear bumpers. Owlishly, he
swivelled his head backwards to see who was making that racket – suspecting
you-know-who.
That sound you didn’t hear, was my gut bursting
with repressed laughter.
One time I had a paper to hand in, and as I
approached him, Dr. J. thrust his left hand out to me. Thinking that it must be
some kind of strange, French handshake and perhaps a gesture that he wanted to
be more friendly toward me, I put out my left hand and shook his left
one too.
He jerked his hand away from mine in revulsion and
snarled, “Miss Doan, I merely wanted that paper you’re holding.”
Later, to get in my own digs at him, whenever he
assigned us an unscheduled, early Saturday morning class, I would come to class
with my hair up in rollers and pin curls, covered by a kerchief, my fuzzy
slippers flopping over my clumpy, rubber galoshes, and with my pyjama cuffs
rolled up, but clearly visible.
I never understood his motives for assigning those
Saturday morning classes. Was it to deny us out-of-towners the chance to go
home for the weekend; or make us miss some fun campus activity; or just to make
sure we stayed sober the Friday night before? Or all of the above.
Before Christmas and New Year’s break, he
announced that he would hold the first class of the New Year on the Friday
morning, not letting it wait till Monday. No one else was having classes that
day. But I didn’t dare miss it or he’d be riding me even harder for the rest of
the year. So, I cut short my time with family and showed up in class in my new,
bright neon pink pyjamas. The only other attendee was the nun, who lived on the
fringe of the campus, and apparently had nothing better to do. She was not
wearing P.J.s.
In the end, he gave me a decent mark, probably
hoping to get rid of me, but I came back the next year for another go at him.
I do believe that I have the dubious distinction
of having personally, started that slovenly trend of wearing pyjama bottoms,
instead of pants in public, which has become fashionable over the years, since
that 1955-56 academic year.
If I’d been on TiK-ToK back then, I’d have owed my
fame to Professor Dr. Jenkins and his holey robe.
Rochelle Doan Craig is an unrecognized (and
rightly so) artist, failed writer with 144 unsold copies of her self-published
memoir, The Twelve Years of Christmas. She’s
also a much-maligned, burned-out teacher, rural newspaper contributor,
travel-lover, pet-liker and Tough Love (before the term was invented) mother of
six (three of each kind), grandmother of sixteen and great-grandmother of 6
1/2. She has taken workshops, retreats and Zoom classes with Brian for ages and
is currently wracking her brain for her memoir: The Twice-Lost Son.
Read more about The
Twelve Years of Christmas here.
For more short stories, poetry, and essays by you
fellow writers see here (and scroll down).
See Brian Henry's upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and four-day retreats here.
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