The Riddle in the Front Row

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One day, as I wrote notes at the blackboard, I heard musical accompaniment, a kind of whistling hum that sounded classical. Mozart! I spun around. Keenan was playing an invisible flute—not mockingly, but simply entertaining himself while I wrote. When I stepped toward him, he lowered his hands and seemed, for once, abashed.

Keenan often lapsed into deep reveries. His mouth would spread into a clown grin, head bobbing, lips bubbling silent words. His eyebrows waggled, his face expressing great joy or ecstatic wonder. During these spells, which usually lasted a few minutes, his fingers would spring open and shut as though flicking water. Eventually his face and fingers would become calm and quiet again, and he would return to our prosaic world.

During one class, Keenan rose from his front-row seat and stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles, bent his fingers back toward his forearms, and then bent forward to touch his knees. “What are you doing?” I snapped.

“I have to stretch,” he said. “For ADD. My doctor will write a note if I need one.” I told him to stretch in the hall. The following day, he complied. I heard his bones cracking as I asked if anyone knew who the father of modern skepticism was. From the hallway, Keenan’s voice bellowed: “Montaigne from France!” I had to laugh.

When I assigned another in-class writing exercise, Keenan declared, “This is stupid. I’m not doing it.” Heads shot up. A few students exchanged glances, happily anticipating a fight. I said, “That’s always your decision, Keenan.” We stared at each other for a long 10 seconds, and then he lowered his head to write.

At the end of the hour, he muttered, “Sorry.”

“Why did you say that?” I asked, after the other students had cleared out. He shrugged.

“Do you want me to be angry?”

“No.”

“Kick you out of class?”

“No.”

“Do you still think the assignment was stupid?”

“It was all right. I had a good answer.”

I wanted to say something meaningful to him. I wanted him to help me understand. He ought to trust me, I told myself, if only for the latitude I gave him. If he would just take one step toward me.

If he did, what would I tell him? Wear clean clothes, cover your nose when you sneeze, wash your hair, and people will like you? Accept the social contract, and you might not be ostracized? I’d just be another person telling him he’d be loved if only he wasn’t him. Who was the ugly one? I focused on the scars on his wrists. This young man suffered, was suffering. Who more than Keenan wished to be someone else?

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