Me and Ray

It was just me and Ray. The bell had rung, the assembly was 25 minutes away and here I sat, the only teacher without a class and therefore the only host to our speaker today. I had Ray Bradbury all to myself.

It was 1975 and our department chair, famous for overpromising and underdelivering assembly speakers, had actually come through this time. The full department had greeted Mr. Bradbury with applause, bows of reverence and even a few tears. Our unadorned, soulless English lab had come to life in the presence of a legend.

We would all reconvene shortly in the auditorium where 2,000+ high school students would feign rapt attention but right this minute, this man was all mine. We sat in two small seats at a too large table. Just me and Ray.

“How long have you been teaching, Gail?”

“This is my third year plus student teaching.”

“And do you love it?” The emphasis was on love with his expression and gestures.

“I do! I love the kids. I love their imaginations. I love that they always surprise me.”

“And I bet they love you!” It was a tease, a twinkle.

“Mr. Bradbury…” Blush.

“Ray.”

“Ray. They seem to like me well enough!”

“Good! So what  did you torture them with before my arrival? Martian Chronicles? Kids like The Martian Chronicles.”

As if on cue, my Martian Chronicles paperback came out from under my notebook and I offered it sheepishly. He flipped it open to the first page and kept talking as he wrote, with a heavy marker, “To Gail with good wishes! From Ray Bradbury” and slid it back to me without a pause.

“And what else?”

I began a litany of his works. My choices so my favorites.

“Fahrenheit 451, of course.”

“Of course,” he smiled.

"Illustrated Man!”

He smiled again.

“‘The Sound of Thunder’, ‘The Veldt’, ‘All Summer in a Day’, ‘I Sing the Body Electric’, ‘There will come…’”

“‘All Summer in a Day’?”

I stopped short. I’d been on a roll and there was more to tell.

“Yes?”

“How did they like that one?” His grin held mischief.

I paused. “They didn’t.”

“I bet!” He laughed, almost roared. “How much didn’t they like it?”

“They hated it, actually.”

He laughed again.

“I offered extra credit to anyone who wanted to rewrite your ending and they all did it. Every one of them.”

He was having fun now.

“And how were their endings? Better than mine?”

“They thought so!” I laughed. “I haven’t graded them yet.”

“They’re here? Well, let’s have a look!”

I scurried to my cubical and gathered the folder marked “Freshman Comp, Section 3” and returned to this grinning bear of a man who greeted my return with his arms open. I handed him the file.

He looked like someone who is about to feast as he moved through each paper, scanning the scrawled paragraphs that rewrote the ending they had hated, righting the wrong of the story about the bullied girl who had been deprived of her one day of summer. They had taken his painful lesson and made it bearable to their 15 year-old selves. They had made the world fair.

He reached across and took my red pen.

“May I?”

“Of course.”

Each page got a “Wow! R.B.” or a funny-face scribble with “R.B.” or, on a few, “I wish I’d thought of this! Ray Bradbury” and as he worked, quickly and with delight, I studied the face of this man who brought such stunning light to a world even as he showed us the damage that fear and malice can do.

He finished the short stack, clicked them into alignment and handed them back. I still stared, smiling.

“That was fun!”

“Thank you,” was all I could manage.

“I think you’re a pretty fine teacher, Miss Vetter.”

“Gail.”

He smiled.

The announcement came over the speaker on the wall, “The assembly will begin in 4 minutes. All students proceed to the gym at this time.”

I would have to share him now. We walked toward the gym as students sailed by us and slammed lockers and called to each other. They would gather in the bleachers where he would tell them to do what they love and love what they do. He would tell them that sometimes he just put a piece of paper in his typewriter and his characters would tell him a story. He would tell them that sometimes you had to stand at the top of the hill and jump and build your wings on the way down. He would challenge them to explore and imagine and write and be kind to each other and look for fairness and be playful! They would laugh and applaud and maybe remember to tell their parents over dinner that some writer guy who was really good had talked at assembly. Their parents might prod a little and find out that their child had been in a room, briefly, with Ray Bradbury.

A few of them might still have a paper kept somewhere that has a bold scrawl saying, “I wish I’d thought of this” but none of them would have what I had when it was 25 minutes with just me and Ray.