Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Mrs. Roesler had strenuously opposed putting her pupils (and their parents) through this indignity, but there was not much else she could do. All of the songs had now been assigned. None of the other teachers would trade with her, and Mr. Lipe, one of the fifth-grade teachers, noted with glee the irony of Mrs. Roesler protesting the inexorable imposition upon her students of a song that was about not protesting inexorable impositions.

“I don’t like it one bit!” howled Mr. Hambert, the father of Melissa Hambert, a straight-A student who chewed her hair. “Why has my daughter’s class been singled out in this way?”

“It was simply the luck of the draw,” said the beleaguered principal, who had come to parent-teacher night looking forward to showing off the new gym, which was very nearly finished except for the fact that its ceiling had yet to be sprayed with protective asbestos foam.

“There’s the woman you ought to be talking to!” volunteered another one of the distraught parents. She was pointing at Carla, her finger jabbing the air as if she were implicating a suspected witch in colonial Salem.

“Are you the one?” asked another woman, who spoke in a softer voice, but who seemed no less concerned. “Was it you who saddled my daughter’s class with this awful Nazi song?”

Before Carla could answer, a man spoke up. He wore a grease-stained auto mechanic’s jumpsuit and must have come straight from work. “Do you believe our children to be selfish and whatchacallit — self-centered?”

Carla shook her head.

“Because that’s what the song’s telling these kids,” the man went on. “Don’t look out for nobody but yourself. That isn’t what our kids are getting at home, and it isn’t what they’re getting in their Sunday school classes, and if you ask me, it smacks of communism.”

“What it smacks of,” said Mr. Hambert, “is submission and subordination. You’re teaching our children to go beyond simply respecting authority and obeying their elders. You want them all to grow up to be brain-dead automatons without the necessary tools for critical thinking. I’m not one of these conspiracy-minded people, Miss Willard, but I don’t think this is the way we ought to be raising our children.”

The other parents in the room concurred with nods and under-voiced statements of strong agreement.

“That isn’t why I picked it,” said Carla, exasperation creeping into her delivery. “I just happen to like the tune. It’s bright and breezy.”

No one bothered to deliver a retort. Carla now knew where things stood. It had become quite evident to her (a teacher whose own pupils were having a grand time meeting the difficult polyphonic challenge of singing “Maria” against the vocalise counter-melody of the “Wedding Procession”) that she had failed both herself and everyone else in not paying more attention to what the song was saying. There was a reason, which she now understood, why the song hadn’t made it into the movie. It is true that negative sentiments have just as much right to be put to music as positive ones, but a lyricist often runs the risk of having his words taken out of character and situational context, especially when they are sung on the radio, or, let us say, on a cafetorium stage in a Pocatello, Idaho, elementary school.

“So what shall we do?” asked Principal Greene. This was Greene’s customary modus operandi in meetings such as these: stating the problem and then entertaining various solutions before coming to a consensus. “Do we leave Mrs. Roesler’s class out of the Evening of Song this year?”

Heads shook. One woman blurted, “Oh, God no.” She, too, had apparently come straight from work, because she was wearing her beauty parlor operator’s smock. It was stained with little red blotches, which looked very much like blood. Carla, when she thought about this later that night, wondered what in God’s name the salon was doing to its customers.

There was only one thing worse than singing about Third Reich worldwide hegemony at Eisenhower Elementary. It was not singing at all . Greene retreated. “I’m aware, of course, that this is probably the least desirable of the remedies.”

The woman who liked to point, whose name was Barbara Calbi, suggested combining Mrs. Roesler’s class with another class.

Mrs. Roesler sighed her objection. “The other teachers wouldn’t have it. Because their students wouldn’t have it. My children have metaphorical cooties, you see. It’s common knowledge that we are the untouchables of Eisenhower Elementary.”

“Well I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Calbi.

“Children can be hateful little buggers,” said the auto mechanic. “When I was in the sixth grade, a bunch of juvenile delinquent sons-of-bitches stuck my head in a urinal and made me kiss a deodorizing puck.”

Several of the women drew back in revulsion, while Mrs. Calbi gagged involuntarily.

“May I then make a third suggestion?” offered Principal Greene. “It’s unprecedented, but in the end it would probably do the least amount of harm.” Greene was looking at Carla as he said this. It was her approval that would count the most.

It was agreed by nearly everyone present in the principal’s office that night — including Carla Willard — that this was probably the best solution, the one that would draw the fewest objections. Mrs. Roesler’s sixth graders would sing a different Rodgers and Hammerstein song — one not from The Sound of Music .

The text of the mimeographed program went as follows:

Welcome to Eisenhower Elementary School’s Seventh Annual Fifth and Sixth Graders’ Autumn Evening of Song. Tonight we honor, for the most part, The Sound of Musicby Rodgers and Hammerstein .

Performances will proceed in the following order :

Mrs. McNutt’s Fifth Graders will entertain us with: “The Sound of Music.”

Miss Schulty’s Fifth Graders will enliven us with: “I Have Confidence.”

Mrs. Beamer’s Sixth Graders will charm us with: “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.”

Mrs. Holiday’s Fifth Graders will delight us with: “My Favorite Things.”

Miss Jackstraw’s Sixth Graders will enchant us with: “Do-Re-Mi.”

Mrs. Drexel’s Fifth Grade Boys will sing: “The Lonely Goatherd.”

Mrs. Drexel’s Fifth Grade Girls will dance the Alpian marionette dance .

Mr. Lipe’s Sixth Graders will touch our hearts with: “Edelweiss.”

Mrs. Domanian’s Fifth Graders will inspire us with: “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.”

Miss Willard’s Sixth Graders will enthrall us with: “Maria” and “Processional.”

Mrs. Roesler’s Sixth Graders will elevate us with “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

The last song, which Carla remembered Jerry Lewis ardently rendering two years earlier during his telethon (suggested to him, he said, by a disabled child who was, no doubt, Broadway savvy), concluded the evening and left many in the audience elevated to the point of tears. Audience members were brought to their feet when on the line “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,” the untouchables of Eisenhower Elementary stepped off their choral risers and literally walked down from the stage, each child then seeking out his or her grandmother and grandfather to embrace in a gesture that, while it had nothing to do with the song, was much appreciated by its recipients.

Those who were unfamiliar with the full repertoire of songs from The Sound of Music thought that this was the song that the Von Trapps must have sung as they were hiking the Alps to freedom. Those who knew better still commended the selection as the perfect inspirational finish to the concert.