Steve was the reason the best person in our class rose to become a traffic commissioner in provincial Santa Barbara and aspired to nothing greater. He didn’t come to our school until eighth grade.
How I remember his first day tells you a little about me and a lot about the school — and reflects poorly on both.
The first and only thing I noticed about Steve were the glasses he wore. The extraordinarily ugly frames were made of cheap, clear plastic. They might have been issued by the Army during the Korean War; Ike wore them and so did McGeorge Bundy.
Our school had a rigorous PE program for boys that consisted of six years of constant training and testing for strength, speed and agility.
Every six weeks we were tested on whether or not we could climb a rope to the ceiling of the field house and on our ability to hit a punching bag for two minutes without a miss (while maintaining the same rhythm and nearly the same speed as Muhammad Ali).
It took some guys three or four years to be able to do both; a few never could.
Steve did both on his first try. His times for the mile, the half-mile and the quarter-mile runs (and also the sprints and hurdles) were fast enough to qualify as a jock, if that’s what he wanted to be. He didn’t.
Within a month, enough people had seen his homework and test scores to qualify him as a brain if he wanted to hang out with them; he didn’t.
He wasn’t a show off when called on in class, but over the years there were times when his answer was so good that I thought, “I couldn’t come up with an answer like that if I had a year to work on it.”
Mr. Banks, the school’s best teacher, taught U.S. history to sophomores and world history to seniors. He had an after-school following of kids who went to his classroom and talked. Steve was one of them.
Banks liked Steve so much that, when we were in ninth grade, he let Steve teach the first session of world history. It was preposterous. A high school freshman teaching high school seniors — who did he think he was?
Steve pulled it off when he was just a freshman and during the next three years as well. You had to see what he did to understand why it worked. The students in his own class had to wait four years, though I can’t say we were holding our breaths.
After many years, I still remember the title of Steve’s class: Three millennia of history in thirteen dates — of which you already know half. “Of which you already know half.”
It’s amazing he didn’t get pants in front of Banks’ classroom for those words alone. But he didn’t get pants.
He started the class by calling out a bunch of historical events and personalities that almost everyone (sort of) knew, and then he asked which came before others. The exercise demonstrated that we knew some facts, but we didn’t know how they related to each other.
He said that with little effort we could memorize seven dates — years actually — that fit with dates we already knew. This would create a structure — scaffolding — that we could use for the rest of our lives to organize, understand and remember historical information.
He promised the additional dates would be easy to remember, like: 399, 1066, 1666, 1603 and 1919.
At the end of class he passed out laminated cards to keep in our wallets. The dates were printed on one side and on the other side it said:
Those who carry this CARD:
Get better grades with less work than
Lead better lives than
Win more arguments at Thanksgiving dinners than
Are more likeable than
Win more athletic events than
Are better people than
Those who don’t.
Mr. Banks said that as long as he was teaching, you could lose one card and he’d replace it — but one card only.
If you lost the second card, you’d face a life of unnecessary academic toil, miserable Thanksgiving dinners, humiliating defeats on the athletic field, unpopularity and ignorance.
It was all said in good humor, and a few kids thought it was funny. Everyone seemed to put the card in their wallet.
It was generally known that Steve and Mr. Banks believed there should be a major change in the way social studies were taught in public high schools. Steve thought he would be the one to make it happen, and Banks encouraged him.
However, in high school, there is no word to describe the disinterest students have in a classmate’s pedagogics.
Steve went to a small, eastern liberal arts college none of us had heard of. He was a Rhodes Scholar and spent two years with Teach for America.
He was drawn to Santa Barbara because of a UCSB program called Confluent Education, which articulated and applied most of the principles he thought should be the basis for all curricula.
He was a popular teacher at a Santa Barbara high school, as he should have been. His classroom was his laboratory and teaching was his life. I happen to know a lot more about what he was doing, but I save it for later in the story.
· · ·
Carol offered to drive the first half of the trip. They got away from San Francisco at two on a Thursday afternoon in late June, but they still failed to beat the traffic. Carol had to deal with the soporific effect of the slow creep to Gilroy and preferred the stimulation of a new audiobook written and read by Barry Eisler to conversation.
After the switch of drivers in King City, they talked briefly before it was Carol’s turn to enjoy the luxury of a mid-afternoon nap.
She asked, “Linda’s been in Santa Barbara for less than ten years, how did she get to be a Superior Court Judge so quickly?”
Carol said, “I should really let you hear the story from her because it’s a good one. But I’ve heard my father’s version of How Linda the Great went to a new town and captured its court so many times and in such excruciating detail that I can’t stand to hear it one more time, even from Linda herself.”
“So, give me the abridged version.”
“That’s what I was going to do. Linda was working in the DA’s office and was reasonably content. There was a rumor going around that a popular judge was doing the nasty with a woman, not his wife, who regularly gave expert testimony in court trials over which he presided.
“The guy was so popular that no one dropped the dime with the Commission on Judicial Performance. He didn’t handle criminal cases, so Linda didn’t deal with him, but you know how righteous she can be.”
“I remember when the principal called her to the front of the assembly to give her a big scholarship and she refused it because she abhorred – that’s the word she used — the politics of the brothers who funded it.”
“That’s my sister. Anyway, this libidinous judge was due to run for re-election and no one wanted to run against him. Linda waited to throw her hat into the ring until the last hour of the final day to file for candidacy.
“Then, she went to the judge and asked about the girlfriend. He was furious and told her that his personal life had nothing to do with his work. Linda said she’d drop out of the election if the rumor was false, but if he had been getting it on with a witness, even once, she thought he should be thrown off the bench.
“The judge called for a bailiff to have Linda thrown out of his chambers. She left quietly and went directly to confront the girlfriend, who cried and stonewalled. Linda says he truly believed his carnal knowledge of a witness didn’t affect the weight he gave her testimony.
“A month after the first meeting, the judge appeared at Linda’s office. He said he would sue her for defamation, have her fired from the DA’s Office, and then have her disbarred.
“She told him again that if the rumor was true, she would either defeat him at the polls or she would bring him down through a complaint to the Commission on Judicial Performance.
“For whatever reason, he withdrew from the election and Linda ran unopposed, which meant that she won.
“The judge now practices law in Santa Barbara. He’s still very popular and there are a number of judges and lawyers who consider Linda to be a political enemy because she ‘drove’ their buddy off the bench.”
“That sounds exactly like your sister. You know she’s been a mentor and role model for me, but I haven’t seen her for years. I’m looking forward to talking to her this weekend.”
Carol said, “You’re looking forward to talking to my sister and I’m looking forward to talking to you…”
“Oh, I want to talk to you too …”
Carol said, “You interrupted. I was about to say that even though I see you regularly, I’m looking forward to some long talks, but not now. Listen to Barry’s book, it’s good, or enjoy some music or enjoy the sound of the wheels on the road, if that’s your thing, but no more talking right now. It’s my turn to nap.”
“Fine with me.”
Carol remembered, “Oh, just one thing. Linda is going to have a small dinner party for us tomorrow night. She’s invited Steve from our class. She did some work with him on a moot court project or something like that and they’ve become friends.
“She wanted me to make sure it was okay with you.”
“Steve? Steve who?”
Carol said, “Steve the Card Carrier.”
“Oh, that Steve; Steve with the glasses.”
“Yeah, that Steve. I think my sister might be trying to set me up, and the first thing I asked was whether he’s lost the seventh-grade-science-teacher glasses.”
“Has he?”
“He still wears them. Linda told me they are a cultural statement. They’re supposed to look like cheap government-issued glasses. They’re actually very expensive. The only way to get them is by special order from Bausch & Lomb, and you have to order a minimum of several dozen pair. Steve and a couple of other people in his family get them from a rich friend who has enough frames to last several lifetimes.”
“A cultural statement? What’s that mean?”
“Something like physical appearance doesn’t matter.”
“He was definitely different, but that’s not a bad thing, considering where we come from. It sounds like he still is. I’m surprised Linda cares what I think about her guestlist, but of course it’s okay with me if he comes to dinner. I hardly knew the guy.”
That was true; she hardly knew him. It had been a long-standing but temporary condition, and it was about to change.
— Brian Burke is a certified family law specialist practicing family law and mediation in Santa Barbara. A researcher and educator in the field of divorce and family conflicts, he also is the creator of the Legal Road Map™. Click here for more information, call 805.965.2888 or e-mail brian@burkefamilylaw.com. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.