Can't & Hunt

CAN’T & HUNT

PROLOGUE

I cut my pedagogical teeth substitute teaching in Downtown Fort Lauderdale. Downtown is not the palm tree-canopied playground where Eunice and Thurston Howell types dock their yachts; Downtown is the crime-ridden concrete jungle where Season One of “COPS” shot (Google it). I broke up a fight on my 1st day. Once, when a freak GI storm found me white knuckling porcelain inside a bathroom stall, I overheard two 8th graders planning to jump a 3rd after disembarking from the bus that day.

At the time the following tale took place, I’d been guest teaching no more than a month. My “training” consisted of watching a few online videos. Support from teachers in neighboring classrooms, a must for maintaining order and orthodoxy in one’s own, proved nearly nonexistent. Full-time teachers were expected to leave their guest teachers “lesson plans” (easily administrable make-work assignments). They rarely did.

“CAN’T & HUNT”

Save for renaming the adolescents involved, none of the following details have been altered, embellished, or fabricated.

While presiding over a 5th-grade classroom, a chubby cherub named Katy waddled up to my desk and inquired, “Mister Z, what’s a [INSERT MONOSYLLABIC MASHUP OF “CAN’T” AND “HUNT” HERE]?” I played an Academy Award-worthy poker face, were Oscars awarded for emotional restraint rather than range. I lowered my voice, leaned in, and replied to her question with one my own, “Where did you hear that word?” “The boy in the blue shirt called me that,” she replied. “Were there witnesses?” I pressed. Absent preamble, Katy shouted across the room, “Jasmine, did you hear Wallace call me a cuh-?” I cut in just in time to prevent her from trumpeting the obscenity: “Ixnay on the untcay!” I growled, “Do not repeat that word, even if the principal demands you do so. He might punish you worse for obedience than for disobedience!” Astute as she was adorable, Katy read my diction and demeanor right. She promptly turned back toward her cohort and yodeled: “Jasmine, did you hear Wallace call me ‘the k-word?’” I briefly considered correcting her; I was there as an English teacher, after all.

Redoubling my severe veneer, I summoned Wallace: “Is it true that you called Katy-?” Wallace went to pieces before I’d finished my query. “I said it,” he confessed between shoulder-shaking sobs, “but not to her. I don’t even know what it means.” His manifest contrition enfeebled my countenance. I said, “Relax, Little Buddy, I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, not get you into it. Promise me you’ll never use that word again, as it’s the worst word in the English language.” The moment my words were spoken, it struck me that they were destined for a black boy’s ears. I promptly qualified them: “The SECOND worst word in the English language, it’s the second worst word in the English language!”

EPILOGUE

Upon padding my resume with two years’ worth of guest teaching, I fled East Ft. Lauderdale’s 3rd-world public schools for suburban West Ft. Lauderdale’s cushier private ones. The move did much to improve my finances and more to preserve my mental health.

Though that era’s fond memories are few, they do exist. Remembering the tyke who only saw the “Please Knock” bathroom door sign after doing her business still makes me laugh. Despite having just vacated the single-user loo, she dutifully carried out the sign’s behest before scurrying back to her assigned seat. “Can’t & Hunt,” however, remains my narrative catalogue's crowning jewel. In fact, it served as my big closer in the twilight of my 18-year semiprofessional stand-up comedy career!