D Minus

The lowest grade I ever received for actual work submitted (not counting zeros or what have you for not doing an assignment) was a D- (D minus), for an essay in 11th grade honor's English on A.E. Housman's poem, "To An Athlete Dying Young". In this class, taught by Mrs. Dedman, we'd often read a poem in class and then have to write an essay, right then and there, on what the poem "meant." Mrs Dedman was of the belief that a poem had one and only one correct meaning, and that she knew what that correct meaning was.

This bothered many of us, since we liked to think that the meaning of a poem or short story might be open to interpretation, and that sometimes a poem was a poem, with no hidden allegories to ancient Greece, or no cryptic jumbling of proper names that when correctly re-jumbled would refer to the author's gay lover. Or what have you. Sometimes, like a cigar, a poem is just a poem. We all went round and round about this all semester, but Mrs. Dedman was not swayed.

Anyway, and to continue after this bit of background, we all read the Housman poem in question and couldn't make head nor tails of it, other than what is spelled out in the poem's title. You could not stretch out the title, however, into a three or four page five-paragraph expository essay, with intro, three paragraphs of points, and conclusion. We all complained. We all gnashed our teeth. I just seethed.

So she said, "Go!" and most people began writing. You could hear the scratch-scratch-scratch of pen on paper fill the classroom; it reminded me of the squeak-squeak-squeak of basketball player's shoes on a highly-polished parquet floor when the announcers are quiet. I did no writing, however. I just sat there, thinking. And seething. Finally, with about 10 minutes to go in the period, I started writing. Oh, I was sarcastic and bitter.

I wrote something like, "A.E. Housman's poem has a theme that you'd think only AE Housman would know, or maybe one that could be determined and analyzed by many people, each coming to a different conclusion based on their life experiences... but you'd be wrong. No, it is only the high school English teacher that has the gift of analysis... She, alone, is bequeathed with the author's true intent like manna from heaven"... etc. It went on in that vein, because I didn't care anymore. With about two minutes to go I threw in something about "planting the stiff" and forgotten races and turned the paper in, without making eye contact, and leaving the classroom with the speed of an athlete dying young.

Several days later Mrs Dedman returned our now graded essays. But before she did so she read a bit from one of them, one talking about "planting the stiff" and overbearing 11th grade English teachers. The class laughed. When I got the paper back and saw the D - I seethed some more. However, it turned out that was one of the better grades. Some of my classmates had received the dreaded F- - (F minus MINUS); we didn't even know such a grade existed. I mean, if you failed, you failed... what is this minus stuff? And minus minus? WTF?

No one could believe I wrote what I actually wrote, and had the guts to turn it in, but if those grades had been curved, I'd have had an A, so who was the fool now? Eh?

We had to return our papers that same day, since we were not allowed to keep the essays we wrote in class (or any essay we wrote at home, for that matter, but theoretically we could have had a copy of take-home essays at least) out of fear that we'd give these essays to some future student. I really, really, wanted my essays, however... especially the D - one, so I asked Mrs Dedman at the end of the year if I could have them.

"No," she said, "we have to keep them. They weren't very good, anyway".

Oh, that Mrs Dedman: How I loved her.