Most high school classrooms are the equivalent of a state hospital waiting room, with the same tacky decorations and off-white color scheme that makes the whole room seem somehow sullied, but instead of inane magazines too often perused through, there are outdated textbooks faced with years of neglect, and instead of some minimum wage nurse who would rather be plastered by an truck than continue to deal with idiots all day, there is some minimum wage teacher who experiences exactly the same feelings. In the school schedule, the English room is mathematically labeled G1, as it is the first classroom on the first floor. (I personally believe that the room is named the first one, because it is unrivaled, perhaps willingly so by other teachers.)
However, the fabled G1, of which the whispered rumors cannot do justice, is dubbed the “Blue Room” due to its distinctive deep blue walls, modeled after Van Gogh’s Starry Night. When you enter, you step into a fantasy world rivaling Narnia, with a certain individual putting Mr. Tumnus’s dynamite personality to shame. A light aroma of incense, rich perfume and old peonies invade the nostrils, immediately lulling the visitor to a relaxed state. The room is not structured into rows and columns with tiny constrictive cubicle desks resembling medieval torture devices. Rather, the Blue Room, resembles a traditional classroom about as much as a naked mole-rat could be mistaken for an adorable tabby cat. There are no stiff wooden chairs worth about as much as a small diet coke, but luxurious woven chairs with plush padding, thick enough to lose a small child in. There are no student workstations, but glass tables with intricate metal decorations and long oak tables fit for a Viking dining hall. Bookshelves go from carpet to ceiling, filled not with textbooks, but of Russian literature, Ancient Greek epics and Deep Image poetry. The walls are decorated top to bottom with strange paintings, like a child cradling a baby pig. I mean what kind of child sleeps with a farm animal? It’s as if the artist were raised in some sort of cornucopia for strange thought (which is true considering the artist’s parents) And in the far corner, a welcoming woman sits sedately, too old to be a mother, too young to be a grandmother, of small stature and fashionable dress. The freshman shuffle reluctantly into their assigned room, sighing at the prospect of yet another year of boring English class with some square, rigid teacher. Unbeknownst to them, they are in for quite a jarring experience, for this is no ordinary teacher.
Mrs. Linzee (the artist’s mother) is an excitable, rambunctious bundle of energy, a whirling dervish of grammatical flair. She often enacts scenes from a Shakespearean play that fancies her, speaking not only the female parts, but the male parts, the children’s parts and often the family dog or the town cow. “Moo.” She doesn’t just read a short story, she embodies it. She is no longer an English teacher, but the Walter Wangerin’s Ragman, with all the wails and moans, which makes for a very awkward classroom for a room full of fourteen year olds. She can have an imaginary jousting match using just her ballpoint pen, thrusting and jabbing her way to victory over this invisible foe. Class isn’t just an education; it was an immersion into acting, an exercise in drama.
She has an uncanny ability to bring literature to life. Odysseus was no longer an odd character formulated in the imagination of some long dead Greek poet, similarly named to America’s favorite father (surname: Simpson). He was the heroic “hunk” (her choice of word) from the classical age ready to whoop up on any mythological creature that dare cross his path. Charles Dickens was no longer some old codger who wrote some brick of a book we would have eventually have been tested on. Rather, it was embedded in us that he was a master of words, a social commentator, a story teller, and a champion for the poor.
She has usual excursions into the cultures of past centuries: one day, she is depicting the fury and fickleness of the ancient Greek goddess, Hera. Another day; she is playacting as Marie Antoinette in the late 18th century. She has a childlike energy and vigor to everything she does — freshman seem like mold congealing in comparison. She has such blazing passion for her work, her hair dances like a crackling fire as she weaves between the bewildered students, rousing them from a night’s slumber still clinging to them like cobwebs during the dreaded first period.
Mrs. Linzee could make any droning exercise seem like a game worthy of the GSN . The dreaded GCE, the Grammar Competency Exam, is a forced examination by the faceless, unjust bureaucracy otherwise known as the New York education department. Are they implying that we are incompetent nincompoops? They test our knowledge of the usage of a comma splice (which sounds like a surgical term when operating on unruly punctuation). However, various wearisome grammatical terms such as “passive voice”, was no longer number 23 on a laundry list of other idiotic vocabulary we were forced to memorize. Instead, it was anything that could possibly end in the phrase “by my great-grandmother” (in which I will never forget, even if I tried). For example: The ball was hit out of the park by my great grandmother. Passive Voice. Godzilla was finally defeated and thrown into the Pacific Ocean by my great-grandmother. Of course it’s passive voice, Godzilla wasn’t thrown by anyone, my Nana chucked that oversized lizard like gum out of a car window. Number 17 on the seemingly endless laundry list: Dangling Modifier. What is that supposed to mean? The word dangling just gives a vivid picture of some hangnail or other piece of loose skin. But imagine a teacher making this statement: “I shot an elephant in my pink pajamas.” We would approach the sentence with the mindset, “Elephants wouldn’t wear pink pajamas; it would make their trunks appear chubby! (a turtleneck with green and yellow stripes is much more slimming). Perhaps only I thought like this, but it is with this insane imagery that I could recognize a dangling modifier. Ugh, the word dangling still sends shivers down my spine to this day, even as I type it.
Her obsession on iambic pentameter borders on the manic. “In sooth I know not why I am so sad”. She utters each individual word with such deliberate emphasis that when the word “Sooth” is released from her overactive declamation, the students brace themselves from her dramatic monologue on the beauty of the moment , however, the vast majority of the students are completely oblivious to the actual meaning of the word “Sooth” The best definition any of the students can conjure up is an unfortunate individual with a severe speech impediment, attempting to describe to the dentist what ails them. “My sooth!” the unfortunate patient cries out. I digress.
The breath of her knowledge is staggering. Literally. Often students are deaf to the bell as they sit mystified by the gyrations and rants of someone determined to simply teach. Perhaps, she succeeds a bit too much in her frantic quest. In the process of leaving, students swoon from the rush of various poetic devices and blood to the head, often leading to entertaining spills cushioned by a pillowy satin rug reminiscent of an exquisite imperial palace. This is a medical phenomenon, I call the “Linzee Bug” who none are immune to, and all who are privileged enough to catch are left with a refreshed, learned view on what it truly means to be genuinely passionate, with a renewed resolve, ready to take on the world, just like the teacher who shakes her fist to the skies, or in this case, the ceiling tiles, in defiant rebellion of lackluster writing.
As this year’s batch of students shuffle out, dazed and amazed, graduating to the wonderful sophomore class (anything seems heavenly compared to the horror of freshman year), they reminisce upon the exciting, dramatic, intense, usually odd, and always fun times in 9th grade English. As the 9th graders become 10th graders, the middle schoolers finally move up to high school, completely unaware of the future insanity of the next eight months. They tremble as they enter the rarefied atmosphere of the lair of Mrs. Linzee, in which so many students have been lucky enough to share the passions of a lady unhindered. So the cycle begins anew, and in the center lies a unique teacher waiting expectantly at her mahogany desk.
