The Red Convertible Porsche

by James Thomas

The midlife crisis, that scary, hideous, exciting, vile, dangerous serpent that lurks within us all is part of being human, if we live long enough to encounter it. Our culture bathes in the banal cliché: the forty-plus male ditching the wife, driving a convertible sports car, and cavorting with females half his age. However, that image has lost its shine, if it ever really had one (foolish behavior rarely shines), not because fewer and fewer males are falling prey to this temptation, these men pass me on the highway every day, the comb-over hair dancing in the wind accentuated with gold necklaces and double chins, but because women are now in the mix. Yet, what I don’t mean to say is there are just as many midlife women driving convertible sports cars with men half their age, though I do see them. And Demi Moore’s recent relationship and marriage receives its share of snickers, but there seems to be more hoots of “You go, girl” than “Has she lost her mind?”

The women’s movement and feminism empowered women, gave a long overdue voice to the irrefutable fact that women possess equal mental capabilities. At no other time in our culture’s history have so many people believed in a woman’s equality with men. In today’s America, more women than men attend college. Women now have money and authority, and that, as everyone knows, equals power. This female influence on the American landscape cannot be overestimated; one of the more formidable influences has been the change in the connotation of midlife crisis. Contemporary America, that prickly ambivalent culture where even our current administration has expressed a postmodern sensibility (“We don’t care about the facts, we create our own reality”), has pushed the male cliché of midlife crisis, a return to lost youth, to lost opportunities, to the back of the shelf where it belongs. Now what many of us believe we face is not only the shock of terror from our approaching mortality, the dark cloud that haunts us all, but also a deeper question, rather a point on our personal timeline where we confront the essence of who we are.

The Chinese ideogram for crisis consists of two characters: one for danger and the other for opportunity. This juxtaposition mirrors the contemporary midlife American, a similarity that is welcomed and long overdue. Many of us now view the midlife stage as a dangerous opportunity. Of what? A dangerous opportunity spurred by the stalwart existential question: Is this all there is? More and more of us, finally, now find ourselves taking stock, the introspective curiosity to find our “true” selves, to see where we have been and look up the highway to where we are traveling.

During the summer of 2005 at the age of forty-six, I found myself in the grips of the unavoidable midlife crisis. For me, as for everyone, the dynamics of my midlife crisis are subjective. The elements I confront at this stage in my life are unique and universal. The crisis was not sudden but rather a slow growth, a bulge that finally could no longer be ignored. I’m not cruising the roads in a red convertible Porsche with a twenty-three-year-old woman. I can not afford the insurance for a red convertible Porsche much less the actual payments, but that issue will be confronted later. No, what has been tumbling in my head is an oppressive feeling caused by eighteen years of teaching college Freshman and Sophomore English courses. That constant double-spaced waterfall (not the serene picturesque falls from postcards of Hawaii but the roiling waters of Niagara) of student writings is a central part of being a community college English professor. The stacking of years results in the stacking of pages; I did the math (as best I could): in my eighteen years of teaching, including graduate school and various teaching jobs, I have evaluated approximately 83,000 pages of student writings. A lobotomy-inducing number, indeed, and certainly a cause to question: Is this all there is?

This summer I found myself in Southampton, New York, on Long Island, attending the Southampton College Writers’ Conference. I met many people, fellow writers, including Melissa Bank, my workshop leader. Meeting dozens of other literary writers is an invigorating experience, our numbers are thin; over one hundred writers of fiction, essays, poetry, and drama meeting for workshops, discussions, and readings is a rare gathering. This conference was in most ways no different from the other three (two Bread Loaf conferences and a Sewanee conference) I’ve attended. I felt validated and inspired being amongst a crowd of people who are drawn to write because of their passion for writing, reading, and most importantly, life. And when Melissa Bank told me one day after I had given a brief reading of an excerpt from one of my stories, “I really like your work,” I experienced a literary euphoria. In addition, I thoroughly enjoyed driving around the eastern tip of Long Island in my rental car, easing down the estate-lined streets of Southampton, the docks of Sag Harbor, and the highway overlooking the gorgeous views of Montauk Point at the tip of Long Island. These experiences energized my life, especially my writing life, but I came to terms with my desire and need to write years ago. Like any other writer, I struggle with insecurities and motivation, but I never waver from my desire for writing fiction; it seems to be hard-wired into my very being. Nevertheless, my Southampton experience had little impact on my “teaching midlife crisis.”

After the conference ended I took a train into Manhattan, a place I had never visited. For two days I marched through the streets of New York City, weaving through Times Square, Central Park, Broadway (catching Kathleen Turner in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), the Guggenheim Museum, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, and Chinatown. I stuck my nose in many restaurants, bistros, pubs, and delis. The electricity, the hum, the energy of Manhattan is incredibly addictive. The stimulus itself is enough to raise one’s heart rate. This city jolt certainly provided a much-needed boost to my life, but as with the writing conference, these experiences did not confront my “teaching midlife crisis,” that is until I found myself sitting in Washington Square Park on Monday afternoon, an hour before sunset. I was people watching, one of the best aspects of walking the streets of Manhattan. And there were all types in that park, young and old, rich and poor, tight and loose. I found myself thinking of returning home the next day, returning to my wife and children, and, of course, to my English teaching position at Valencia. Like a slow sprinkle that turns into a downpour, my mind drifted to my upcoming classes, syllabi, and, inevitably, the papers and stories I would soon be evaluating. My balloon lost air as I sat on that park bench and contemplated the approaching semester; the air escaping through a dread-induced puncture. Suddenly a man walked by that caught my attention. At first glance, I thought he was a friend of mine, a high school teacher I had for 9th grade biology and 11th grade English, a Mr. Harris, especially in light that I know Mr. Harris loves New York City and has been several times. During my high school years, he organized senior trips to New York City. But when I studied this man as he continued his walk by the fountain, I realized he was not Mr. Harris, the face too long, his height too short.

As the man strolled from my view, my thoughts rifled through the files containing my high school experiences with Ron Harris, an easy task. Harris cut a wide path, not in girth (he was thin as a rail) but in spirit, especially in light of working with 14-18 year-old young adults, humans on the brink of adulthood, taking their first steps in the shallows with the constant fear of stepping off the secure shelf of innocence and into the depths of the adult chaos. I remembered how Mr. Harris changed my life. I was a fifteen-year-old who worshipped sports when I walked into Harris’s 9th grade biology class, but when I graduated high school I had a love for learning that was in no small part due to this man.

The fall of my 9th grade year was 1973, and Harris was a product of his times, long hair (he could have been a double of Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees) and liberal views (a vocal supporter of the Environmental Movement and organizer of our school’s Earth Day). However, Harris never preached, rather his views were expressed like all of us, through the way he conducted himself. He was always there, always prepared, always coming to class with intent in mind. Yet he created inspiration and admiration with more than just responsibility, Harris was serious about learning, about loving the idea of learning. His view of being a teacher and a man could be exemplified with his view of cheating: one doesn’t cheat because that doesn’t help one learn. He was a teacher and man who confounded my understanding of both. I was not alone in my rapture, many others were pulled into this man’s love for what he was doing, for teaching, and perhaps most importantly, for learning.

Ron Harris had a lot of patience for a classroom full of fifteen-year-olds, but he never lost his zeal for what he was trying to teach us. We would take field trips on the mountain behind our high school. There was lots of laughing and cutting up on these hikes (we were still kids), but when we stopped for a few minutes to listen to Harris explain facts about the trees, insects, and animals living in that ecosystem, there was a silence of respect that emanated through those trees; he knew what he was talking about, and he was serious about teaching us. And in my 11th grade English class Mr. Harris would explain the beauty of poetry, of stories, of Shakespeare, my first encounter with the literary world. He also was the school’s drama teacher, directing the student plays. I wasn’t in drama, but when the Senior Escapades approached, I wanted to participate (in my skit, I was the Laurence Olivier dentist who drills into Dustin Hoffman’s teeth from the movie Marathon Man with the Beatles’ “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” floating from our auditorium’s speakers), a highlight from my high school experience.

At the 2000 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, I met and talked to the writer Charles Baxter. I told him that reading his short story “Gryphon” was one of the reasons I became a writer. He paused and looked in my eyes for several seconds. He said “thank you” then proceeded to explain how that story was his most popular, how many people always came to that story when discussing his work. I’ve never forgotten how that proclamation affected him. I observed those few words pulling Charles Baxter out of the moment; for a brief beat or two, he was unaware of standing in a grassy meadow nestled in the Green Mountains a few miles from Middlebury, Vermont, surrounded by 200 other writers sipping drinks and wine. I wanted to express the impact of his words on my life, but I wasn’t prepared for the depth of his reaction to my proclamation. I realized that the weight of his social stutter came from more than a compliment of his work; I’m sure he hears praise all the time. His eyes bored into mine because he comprehended that the words he put on the pages had helped motivate and inspire another human being to become a writer. All of us have influences which have shaped our lives, which have played parts in determining what decisions we make, who we are, what we do, and who we become. In large part, I came to be standing next to Charles Baxter in that meadow because of Ron Harris.

As I sat on that bench in Washington Square Park, I contemplated the ambivalent thoughts and emotions from these associations. The numbers are difficult to face down; the semester’s tsunami of student writings cannot be avoided. The melancholy undertow tugged at my ankles, but a cool gentle breeze caressed my face. I thought of a few former students, a group of students who, through the years, have confronted me in the hallways and corridors, stopped by my office for a chat, called on the phone, and emailed me. They told me not so much that they had enjoyed my class but how I had helped them become better writers, appreciate language and literature.

Almost every teacher at every level is underpaid; a shameful fact that is so woven into the public mindset that the common phrase “One doesn’t teach for the money” is used as a justification. Teachers are expected to swallow, without notice, the sour truth: a teacher’s salary will never compensate for the work and dedication. I’ll never forget the first itemized bill I received from a lawyer: 10 and 15 minute phone calls were charged at the rate of $150 an hour. Such a discrepancy is an endemic problem for America, a symptom of how we undervalue education. The burn-out rate for public school teachers continues to rise: many now bail after five years of low pay for one of the most important occupations in a progressive society, an occupation that is one of the main building blocks in the foundation of a working democracy. A teacher in this country has to dig deep to continue to teach, especially as the years continue to mount.

The convertible red Porsche for a teacher in America is a new job, a job that pays more money for less work. The carrot dangles in front of her eyes as she stares at a pay stub with retirement a breadth away. I thought of Mr. Harris, who recently retired after over thirty years of teaching. And I thought of a couple of students who, within the past few months, told me one of the reasons they wanted to be writers was because of my creative writing class, because I had praised their writing, encouraged their desire to write in a world that cares less and less about artists. Teaching people something you enjoy is a noble task, and there is where many people leave the conflict: What more do you want? Yet, the question remains: Is this all there is? The answer for some is in the lots of the car dealerships with a shattered family left in the wake. For others the answer lies in a higher salary as they walk away from an educational system that continues to crumble. Perhaps the courage to continue teaching is centered on faith. Our culture punishes those who do not have faith in the American god: money. Thirty years ago, the student parking lot of my high school in Huntsville, Alabama, contained a menagerie of dilapidated used cars, a collection of mostly creaky, crippled vehicles. Today the student parking lots of Valencia Community College are filled with gleaming and glistening late model cars. Many of the young adults who came of age during the sublime period of the 1960s and 1970s possessed a faith in goals and ideals that had little to do with the idolatry of money. Most of my students today howl the contemporary battle cry, “Show me the money!” If America continues to hurtle itself down that mountain towards the promised land of money without any chance of changing course and continues to pay its teachers a compensation that borders on punishment, then why is everyone so surprised at the downward spiral of our students’ skills and competencies? The cliché is true, teaching is a noble task for a human being, but we should not forget that teachers are human beings.

Contact James Thomas, Professor of English.

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