When people ask about my children I have a standard reply,
My son, Adam is 23. He's doing his Phd in Math at the University of Chicago. My daughter, Mira is 20. She's doing a journalism degree at Ryerson. My son, Jesse is five. He's completing a three year program at Montessori in reading, music and finger paint.
In fact, Jesse, like many children may already be as overprogrammed as we adults. He's got skating lessons and Sunday school lessons, swim lessons (which my wife claims are too essential to qualify as lessons) subscribed seats to the theatre and symphony, a growing pile of educational CD roms as well as his own email file for friends and contacts. The gift he really needed for the holidays was an electronic organizer.
I grow wistful. My "extracurricular" life was so much simpler. I grew up on Main Street and Inkster Avenue. And all the back alleys. I learned by watching the adults and other kids, by having chores and jobs. I never had lessons.
Not true. I did once have lessons. (I am not counting my Bar Mitzvah training which I categorize as penal servitude ending in escape. I rebelled, my parents gave up and instead of a Bar Mitzvah, we had a nice meal at Ray and Jerry's)
However, I once did take legitamite and valuable lessons, though not from an officially authorized teacher. And I was probably the only student he ever had.
Mr. Friedman was a North End butcher who used to frequent my parents' cafe on Main Street. He was a short, stout man with a bad lisp and glasses as thick as Coke bottles yet Mr. Friedman had a remarkable talent. He could walk confidently into a room, face an audience and hold them with a clever and convincing speech.
My mother decided that if Mr. Friedman could overcome all his obvious handicaps, he could teach me how to overcome mine. I was merely awkward, self conscious and lacking even basic social skills; afflictions of a typical thirteen year old, especially a loner. The two of them made some sort of an arrangement. I doubt any money was involved.
Mr. Friedman stopped by the cafe one evening when I was working a shift. He studied me as I washed dishes and swept the floor. He eventually called me over and told me what he and my mother had decided. He said he wanted me to write a five minute speech and to present it to him at his house on Sunday.
I have no idea what I wrote or how I sounded but I do remember that he was tremendously impressed. He then gave me tips on how to speak, how to pause, how to stand and gesture. The next week I returned with a better speech and a better presentation. Again, he was tremendously impressed and offered even more tips.
His praise would have surprised my teachers who were not at all impressed with me. They would cite my short attention span, poor work habits, lack of respect and, of course, my big mouth - again, further afflictions of a thirteen year old.
So I was left to Mr. Friedman who managed to inspire me to write and rewrite, to memorize and rehearse week after week because Mr. Friedman offered me something no other teacher did, something rare and wonderfully nurturing - his sincere and enthusiastic appreciation.
I made about fifteen speeches before he judged me ready for the next level. He took me downtown and had me address his public speaking group, a dozen or so businessmen who formed the local Toastmasters Club. All of them were tremendously unimpressed. After all, I was just some kid.
But I wasn't just some kid to Mr. Friedman. He kept me writing and memorizing and trying more techniques. What an odd pair we were as we got off the bus from the North End every Monday night and we entered the YMCA, especially odd to that stodgy group of businessmen - me, a gangly, self conscious young dog and my "teacher", the lisping butcher.
Yet somehow I learned, or somehow Mr. Friedman changed me because finally, one night I earned that group's grudging applause. It was a great moment for a kid like me, a kid who could have turned out to be anything, or nothing at all.
Now, of course, I speak before groups all the time - to my own students, to whole schools when I visit as an author, to conferences of teachers and writers and to the general public. I can even watch the people in the audience as they watch me. I'm seldom nervous, I like it up there. But I'd surely like to see my old teacher one more time, see him watching and listening, nodding and smiling the way he always did, following everything I said as if I were speaking the golden truth, and no one could say it better.
Oh, Mr Friedman, you old alchemist, when I think of how you thought
of me, I shine.
THE END