Chapter 42
Ron’s technique for doing the play was one that he’d thought out. He had tried having the students read the play out loud in class, assigning each of them a role. But the language was too difficult and the girls had struggled with it and not enjoyed the experience. That was when he went to the Bloomfield Public Library and found that they had recordings of all of Shakespeare’s plays. From then on, he played the recording while he and the girls followed along and listened to the actors read their parts as they were meant to be heard. He would frequently stop the recording to discuss what they had just read and listened to. But today he had a new approach to start with.
“How many of you have heard of Bruce Springsteen?” he asked at the start of the class. A few scattered hands went up into the air and Ron saw immediately that they were not the hands of the Spanish speaking girls. “I want you to listen to these words,” he said. Then immediately he changed his mind and turned to the blackboard and wrote as it scribbled, printing in large block letters that pressed hard into the chalkboard and reciting as he wrote.
“All men want to be rich and rich men want to be king and a king ain’t satisfied until he controls everything.” Then he turned back to them and let the words sink in. Then he repeated it slowly and underlined each word as he spoke. What do you think of that?” he said.
“I don’t think that all men want to be rich,” said Patricia Nieves.
“You don’t?” said Ron.
“I think some men want to be rich but some people just want to be happy. If they can be rich and happy, that’s great. But they would not want to be rich and unhappy.”
Ron stopped. He smiled. “That was an incredibly insightful thing of you to say.”
The girl beamed and wiggled in her chair for him.
“But,” said Barbara, don’t most people think that being rich is what will make them happy?”
Ron smiled again. This was going to be a good day. The girls washed away all thoughts of the previous night like they were bugs that were stuck on his windshield and they had an incredibly powerful squeegee and just slid them away like easy stains on glass.
“Once you get on that bandwagon though, it might be hard to stop,” said Ron. “Mac was happy. He was loyal. He was living comfortably. Why did he need more?’
“Cause his wife was a witch with a b,” said Imelda.
Ron wondered if she had made the reference to calling Lady Macbeth a witch on purpose or if she had just stumbled into it. Then a thought hit him and it silenced him. “Let’s listen for a moment,” he said and started the play.
It didn’t matter if it was on purpose. How many thoughts had he stumbled into? They were still his thoughts. Afterwards he would reflect upon them and think ‘damn, how did I think of that?’ but he had grown to accept that it was what happened to him while he was being Mr. Tuck in front of his classroom. Maybe it was the same for them. And then the refrain, ‘Time and place and people’ went through his mind again and he stopped the recording perfectly at the end of the scene.