Mr. Gutman, part 2

Rev. Susan's sermon Sunday was about making choices. She told a story about a cool sunday school teacher she had in California, an older guy who happened to be a physicist. What she remembered was getting to freeze things with liquid nitrogen, being treated as an intelligent human being capable of making choices, rather than somebody who is born wrong and needs to be made right, and not getting indoctrinated.

It reminded me of Mr. Gutman. I probably learned something about English and social studies in eighth grade, but what I most remember is Mr. Gutman's mischievous grin and dapper herringbone twead jacket around his ample middle. ('Gut' = "good" and "belly" and "courage"; he had all three. Picture an animated, slightly rotund super-hero: Gut-man!) More than anything else, he reminded us that we were talented, bright, capable of doing more than we knew, and responsible for what we said and did, because it made a difference what we said and did.

It would be too humiliating to dredge up all the times I did something foolish and Mr. Gutman called me on it. But just as an example, how about the time the class was talking about Mussolini coming to power in Italy, and Mr. Gutman saw me say 'Wop' under my breath. He didn't miss much. He stopped and asked me how I thought Mike Torni, on the other side of the room, felt about that. We had our desks encircling the room instead of lined up in rows, so everybody could see everybody else, even though I sat with my jock friends and Mike Torni sat with his greaser friends. Thus confronted, I had to think about my unexamined racist world-view.