The Windshield & the Bug

Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song that contains the line, ‘Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.’ Last week I was both.

I’ll start with the bug. At lunchtime on Monday, my wife called. She’s the teaching principal at Dublin Consolidated School, and she had an emergency. The Christmas concert was that night, and the firefighter who normally plays Santa Claus couldn’t make it. Would I be willing to take his place and pass out the presents to the children of the town?

That’s why I was in the DCS guidance counselor’s office at 6:30 pulling an XXXL red suit (padded out with two pillows) over a sweatshirt and jeans. I considered taking off the sweatshirt and jeans first so I wouldn’t be too hot, but decided against. Good thing.

My directions were simple and specific. Enter the packed multipurpose room, sleighbells in my left hand, bag of toys in my right. Shout ‘Ho, ho, ho!’, then run, don’t walk, down the aisle to the stage, where my chair was waiting.

Hey, I’ve done Shakespeare. I can handle ‘Ho, ho, ho.’

In I go. Ho, ho, ho. Run toward stage. But then, as in some particularly awful nightmares, my legs are moving but I don’t seem to be making any progress. My heart sinks. So do my pants.

By the time I get to the stage, pants and pillow are around my ankles.

I waddle to the chair (praying nobody in the crowd has a videocamera), drop bells and bag, and retrieve my trousers. It’s too late for my dignity.

Two nights later, I was at the annual winter concert of the ConVal chorus and band, and I’ve never seen so many people in the gym. There must have been close to a thousand, and a lot of them had to stand up. When the last note was played, we all stood up.

Educator Howard Gardner has a theory that there are seven different forms of intelligence: verbal and mathematical (the ones schools honor the most), but also athletic, musical, artistic, and both interpersonal (getting along with others) and intrapersonal (getting along with yourself). A lot of the students performing that night seemed to have them all.

One of the most brilliant thinkers I’ve ever taught was playing the violin when she wasn’t singing. Another girl, a writer and actress, sang with the chorus, then walked over to the band, where she moved from section to section, playing a handful of instruments. A devout Christian boy who helps me dig up Biblical allusions in Modern Literature, donned a pair of hipster shades and blew improvisatory magic on the tenor sax. Football players, field hockey players, soccer players put down their pads and sticks and spikes and robed themselves in melody.

It was moving, witty, revelatory, magnificent. We cheered and whooped, and a little girl who was up much too late just couldn’t sit still. She danced in the aisle. I wanted to join her.

Watching what my friends Ray Sweeney and David Aines (chorus and band director, respectively) had created was inspiring. When parents half-jokingly ask me to talk their kids out of a career in theater, I try to explain why every kid should act or sing or dance. Like athletics -- another underrated academic experience -- they’re all about discipline, preparation, and performance.

When a student walks out on a stage, or attempts a pirouette, or lifts her head or his trumpet to focus on the conductor, genuine learning happens.Maybe what follows is a triumph. Maybe your pants fall down. Either way, you have an experience a hundred times more meaningful than a final exam.Co-curriculars are not extras. They’re the core.

‘Sometimes you’re the Louisville Slugger,’ the song goes, ‘sometimes you’re the ball.’

Sometimes you’re both. But either way, you’re in the game.