Craig Spence © 2022
It was like stepping into a time tunnel and heading back more than 50 years, walking down that long corridor; passing students chatting, laughing, hurrying heads-down between classes; then up the stairs and into Room 215, where he was expected to share his observations as an author and sometime poet.
He stepped over the threshold with a sense of foreboding. An eerie premonition that, despite the sameness of it all, everything had changed in the half century since he’d celebrated his graduation from St. Laurent High School back in 1969… and awakened the next morning to a splitting hangover.
My hair has greyed, skin wrinkled, reflexes slowed and primal urges waned, he thought. My kids have grown up, and I’ve become a grandfather… I’m history.
While the students settled in and Ms. Drury introduced him, he realized there’s nothing like making a presentation to a Grade 12 English class to remind you just how ancient you have become. How irrelevant!
Unlike indigenous peoples, North Americans of European extraction – the majority in Room 215 – don’t really have a tradition of cherishing the wisdom of their ‘elders’. To them senior citizens are alien creatures, apparitions from the world of rotary phones, black and white TV, Underwood typewriters, cursive script and cheap gasoline.
Generation Pre, he figured. As in ‘pre anything digital or online’.
A Google reference had informed him that he’d be addressing students of Generation Z, ‘our first true generation of digital natives,’ according to the write up. ‘Born into a technological world, information has been placed at their fingertips and social media use has become the norm.’ The article was titled ‘Gen Z and Gen Alpha in the Classroom: The Importance of Digital Learning’. It ran under a photo of a girl wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles, her hands reaching out to touch something he couldn’t see or even imagine.
He considered it an iconic portrayal, troubling with its certainty that two beings can exist in the same space, at the same time, and yet be on entirely different planets. My version of Room 215 might just as well be off Platform 2153/4, he thought. An utterly alternate reality.
Buck up! he rallied. Don’t be pathetic.
And so began his laboriously prepared presentation. Later, he would describe the episode to Maria as, Sort of like being a fly, droning around in a room, looking for a place to land. “I’m still laughing at myself.”
When she consoled him, he shook his head. “They were being honest, hon, not rude. And I learned more in that hour or so than I care to admit.”
“Like what?”
“That even when kids are smiling and nodding at my rambling, for them it’s like talking to someone who’s dialled the wrong number, long distance, from another world.”
“I’m with them on that one,” she joked, and they had a good laugh.
Thankfully the session had ended on a high note, he remembered. They had a brief conversation about how authors deal with rejection, which he morphed into an oblique commentary on his then-and-there. “I referred back to comments I’d made earlier about the writers’ vocation of ‘experiencing and expressing life’, and his belief in the personal importance of the literary cycle… “How that gives you the strength to push through and carry on,” he explained.
“Then, when Ms. Drury said thanks as I was packing up my books and papers, the students gave me a fulsome applause!”
“You’re sure it wasn’t just because you were leaving?”
He ignored the quip.
“I suspect it was in recognition of a determined effort by someone hopelessly out of his depth. Appreciation for his refusal to give up – like cheering on a water buffalo who’s blundered in a pit of quicksand.
“I do believe they were telling me to keep trying.”
Not that they’d want me to book another performance before the end of their last year in high school, he thought. But perhaps to inflict myself on the Generation Alphas, who will soon be occupying their seats in Room 215… or is it 2153/4?
“I have to say, daunting as it remains, the thought of having another go appeals to me,” he admitted to Maria. “And I sort of hope I’m invited!”
They hugged, then got on with the business of preparing dinner.