A Valuable Lesson - based on a true false story

“When I was a little boy,” my gravel-throated, slasher-grinning English teacher began one class – another seemingly endless fifty-two minutes regarding a lesser-known work by Cormac McCarthy – in his trademark tone somewhere between Jack Torrance and The Joker, “I used to have seizures.”

An uneasy silence fell upon the room like an upturned pot of chili: in tremendous, unsettling drips.

“I had seizures all the time,” he continued menacingly, none of us having the faintest clue where he was going with this.  “The kids were really mean to me.  They used to call me seizure boy.”

It's not that this had never happened before, because it had.  He would tell stories like this all the time.  About Stewie, his frog, who wouldn't come out from under the rock in his tank to look at him anymore, and how that made him unreasonably sad.  About the years back when the school would burned its garbage and how he would put starter blanks in trash bins so that when the janitor ran the incinerator, they would go off and he would think someone was shooting at him.  About his wife or his colleagues or his cross country team, really about anything.  Whether or not we liked it, we were very familiar with the man's tangents.  The problem was that we just never knew what they would be, how insane they would get, or if they even had a point relevant to class.

“And the doctor told my parents that unless the seizures would stop, I would die.”

I suppressed a shudder as the story went on in that voice that would make the Black Tongue of Mordor sound like a concert aria in comparison.

“This of course was bad news, but the doctor said he had a solution,” he said, getting to what we assumed, or at least hoped, would be the crux of the story.  “He said that there was a pill I could take.  And it would stop my seizures and save my life.  But there was a problem.”

Ah, now this must be the point.  A story about a choice where neither option presents a victory.  This would be a perfect way to discuss the unfortunate choices that John Grady, our book's code hero, would have to make.  A few of us straightened up, sensing the importance of what was to come.

“If I took the pill,” he said, looking us dead in the eyes, “it could have the side effect of rotting the bones in my jaw off.”

Macabre? Of course it was.  But anyone would come to expect that sort of thing from a teacher who decorated his desk with a replica of the possessed doll from Child's Play.  We knew that wasn't the point of the story.

“So I could either lose my jaw, or I could die.  Obviously, I didn't want to die.  But I was a teenager.  I wanted to suck face.”

By this point, another teacher appeared in the door, listening, not speaking, and carrying a sizable roll of CAUTION-printed Police line.

“So I didn't take the pill.”

We waited.

“And I died.”

There wasn't a sound in the room.  None of us knew what to think, much less what to say.  We wondered if we should have seen that ending coming.

“Hey Dom,” he said, looking up as the other teacher laughed and started adhering the caution tape to the door frame for unknown reasons.  “You'll never guess what I got these kids to believe.”