Lori Ostlund - The Bigness of the World

“Idyllic little Bali,” Joe replies.

“What?” says Noreen.

“Idyllic little Bali,” repeats Joe. “Don’t you remember yesterday, when Martin first sat down and I asked him where he was coming from? He said: ‘I’ve just spent eight days in idyllic little Bali.’ ” From very far away, which is how yesterday seems now that it has become a time when Martin was still alive, Noreen can hear him intoning the words, like a man in a trance, like a man exhausted by the task of putting paradise into words.

Dr. Dunno. That is what the boys call me, what they write on desks and in bathroom stalls, a play on my name — which is Daneau — and on the fact that, day after day, that is how they respond to my questions. “Dunno,” they say with an elaborate shrug and the limp, unarticulated drawl that has become ubiquitous among teenagers in a classroom setting; they cannot even be bothered to claim their ignorance in the form of a complete sentence, to say, “I don’t know,” a less than desirable response to be sure, but one that does not smack of apathy and laziness and disdain.

They arrive each day with matted hair and soiled faces, a lifetime of wax and dirt spilling from their ears. “Ear rice,” the Koreans call it, referring, no doubt, to the tiny balls that a normal person, one who attends to his ears on a regular basis, is likely to produce — not to the prodigious amounts produced by thirteen-year-old boys oblivious to hygiene. However, I cannot sit beside them each morning as they prepare for school, coaxing them to apply just a bit more soap, to consider a cleaner shirt. No. My realm is the classroom, my only concern that when they leave it, they possess at least a modicum of proficiency in that much-maligned subject to which I have devoted my life: mathematics.

Would it surprise you to know that I have students who do not understand the concept of ten, who, when given the task of adding some multiple of ten to a number ending in, let us say, four, cannot predict that the sum will also end in four? This, of course, suggests a much bigger problem — an ignorance of zero itself. The Romans developed no concept of zero and we see where that got them, the Roman numeral system in all its past glory relegated to the role of placeholder in complex outlines and on the faces of clocks.

“Imagine your lives without zero,” I once challenged my students in a moment of folly, thinking that I was offering inspiration, a new window onto the world, but they had stared back at me blandly, no doubt wondering what zero could possibly have to do with eating and sleeping and unabated nose picking.

“You mean like sports?” said James Nyquist. I had not meant sports, for sports is a topic to which I never allude.

“Kindly elaborate, Mr. Nyquist. I have yet to see your point.”

“Like in the beginning when no one’s scored,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, and then, more forcefully, “Yes!” for I meant precisely this.

“We’d just start at one, I guess,” he said.

“One?” I repeated. “But one implies that you’ve already scored.”

“You said to imagine our lives without zero,” he pointed out. “That means it doesn’t exist, right? And if both sides start at one, it’s the same as starting at zero.”

It was as though I had eliminated Pringles from their lives. Fine, they would eat Ruffles instead. That easily was zero dispensed with.

* * *

This week, we are discussing averages, concerning ourselves only with mean averages, the general consensus among my colleagues being that median and mode would simply muddy the already none-too-clear waters. Toward this end, I gave young Mr. Stuart the following task: to average five test scores ranging from 77 percent to 94 percent. After much button pushing (for no task can be performed without a calculator firmly in hand), he announced that the average score was 264 percent.

“That, sir, is impossible,” I replied. I have found that few things annoy an eighth-grade boy like being referred to as sir by a grown man.

He, however, was quick to provide me with incontrovertible proof. “See for yourself,” he said, surprisingly smug for one whose chin still bore a dusting of toast crumbs, and thrust the calculator in my face. Indeed, through some mismanagement of the keys, he had arrived at 264 percent.

“Do you not understand what average means?” I asked.

“It means you’re like everyone else,” he said.

“Well,” I replied. “Yes. Except for those who are above average. And, of course, those who are below.” I did not make it personal, did not point out his obvious qualifications for the latter category; I am, after all, an educator. Moreover, I have been reprimanded for such things in the past. Just last month, it was brought to my attention that the names I had given to the three math groups in the class were inappropriate. The most proficient, and not incidentally smallest, group I chose to call the Superheroes, a name that I considered attractive (dare I say motivational) to boys of this age. The middle group was dubbed the Bluebirds, an innocuous but not unflattering moniker. It was the name that I selected for the third group that raised some ire. The Donkeys.

“But didn’t you consider the implication?” the principal asked. “Donkeys are slow animals.”

“I am quite familiar with the characteristics of the donkey,” I replied indignantly. “In short, I found the comparison apt.”

“Well, perhaps you would like to explain that to the boys’ parents?” he said.

Although I was spared having to answer to that particular pack of irate mothers and fathers, I was required to submit a list of three appropriate replacements for “the Donkeys” by the following morning, a request with which I complied; by noon, I had been invited back to the principal’s office to discuss my suggestions.

A word about Thorqvist, my principal. First, I find him an affable fellow, though a bit less affability would work wonders with some of these boys. I also cannot object to his sartorial choices, nor to the fact that he is always well pressed, a state of affairs that his wife is surely behind. He is somewhat of a malapropist, particularly in regard to clichés, which he uses liberally and generally manages to botch. On one occasion — and here I said nothing because I supported his cause if not his phrasing — he urged the faculty to be careful in making sweeping curriculum changes, lest they “throw the baby out with the dishwater.” Another time, during an assembly when it would have been inappropriate to correct him, I had literally to take my tongue between thumb and index finger as he cautioned the boys not once but thrice: “Each of you must learn to take responsibility for your educations if you do not wish to find yourselves up a creek without a ladder.”

Lastly, there is Thorqvist’s habitual misuse of the reflexive pronoun “myself,” which he insists on employing as a subject, a task for which it was never intended. (Forgive me for stating the obvious.) Thus, he began our discussion of my suggestions for a replacement name as follows: “The vice principal and myself have reviewed your list and find your suggestions no less objectionable than ‘the Donkeys.’ ”

I removed my spectacles and cleaned them thoroughly, and when I resumed wearing them, I found that my list had appeared in front of me. Across the top, I had typed “Suggested Name Replacements for the Slow-Learners’ Group” and beneath this, in slightly smaller print, “Submitted by Dr. Michael Daneau.” In the middle of the page, indented and prefaced by bullets, were my suggestions:

• the Mongrels