Senseless Moments: Ian Jones

Mrs. Morrow was almost never absent. Even that day, she felt present, peering over our shoulders at our new cursive. Our substitute had a New Zealander accent (a fact or conjecture I realize now only in retrospect, from the sounds of memory). He was older, hair-growing-out-of-his-ears old, and it seems to me now like he would have had stories to tell. Which, actually, is what he was doing, I think. Yes, I recall him pacing the room, tracing a zig-zag pattern between our rows of desks recalling age-appropriate, didactic anecdotes. We had had a few different substitutes who had done this. . . I'm recalling Mrs. Canada, who always talked about the trip she and her husband had taken to the Holy Land. Settling at the front of the class, the old man faced us and continued. But Ian Jones and I were not listening. For as long as we could do so out of earshot, we had been whispering things against him. Long strings of curse words, squeezed together back to back, as repetitive and yet as inexplicable as DNA chains. They were like magical incantations we were leveling against him, confident that our steady streams would inevitably effect his spontaneous combustion, to our glee. He had done nothing to merit our spite but be new and different (betraying his weakness by smiling, stupidly assuming our innocence). Ian had actually taught me how to cuss. Here's to you, Ian Jones, for teaching me the basic grammar of cussing.