00/02/06

A couple of days ago I ran into an old friend.

It seems everyone has a story about a teacher that made a real difference in their life.

Mr.Holuboff was mine.

It wasn't until grade 11 that I met him. Very late in my school life, but not too late it would seem.

School for me was never a pleasant nor inspiring experience. My mother recently gave me all my old report cards. Every one of them decribed me as "Lazy", "Messy" "Careless" "Capable of much more than he's giving". Later, they turn to "Argumentative" "Hostile" and "Disruptive" Those words all hurt as much today as they did twenty plus years ago.

I hated every fucking minute of it. I was bored to tears half the time and trying to disappear the other half. By the time I trudged into Mr Holuboff's creative writing class I was halfway between suicidal and homicidal, more than your garden variety teenage angst.

Mr. Holuboff changed all that.

Every Wednesday we were to hand in three pages of short story of five pages of poetry. "You will get a grade out of ten" he told us in his peculiarly loose-lipped way "NO ONE HAS EVER GOTTEN TEN OUT OF TEN!" he shouted at us, "AND NO ONE EVER WILL!"

It wasn't a threat nor was it a challenge, it was a statement.

I had experimented with poetry before, but had been told by past teachers "This isn't poetry, it doesn't rhyme" I never bothered telling them that poetry is poetry, rhymes are rhymes, neither is the other... anyway. I slammed out five pages of poetry for the first Wednesday.

I never expected 8/10. Rather than being honoured or excited, I was suspicious. This had never happened before, must have been a fluke.

The next Wednesday I handed in some scribblings and got another high mark. Over the ensuing weeks I consistently got high marks with my poetry, sometimes he would slash up a poem with remarks, but they were never insulting, cruel or demeaning. I look back on it now and realize that he never acted as a teacher with me, he acted as a coach. Short stories eluded me, I tried a couple, but they never worked.

He was good at what he did, and as good as his word. No matter what I gave him, no matter how I struggled and sweated. I would get 9 1/2  or 9 3/4 One time I got
9 5/8. It was almost a joke between us.

It's twenty years later and only now I realize how much I looked forward to the Wednesday assignments, and how I anticipated the Friday results.

I took creative writing 11 and 12 with him, that class is the only reason I finished high school. About three quarters through the grade 12 course I sat in my room hammering at my typewriter trying to write. I remember feeling my heart rip open and painful, horrible words spill from it, throwing themselves on the page. I pulled the paper out of the typewriter when I was finished, signed it, and wept until I slept.

The next day I handed it in, not really looking at it.

Friday I got it back with no marks or corrections, nothing at all. I strolled up to his desk and told him he forgot to mark it. He looked upat me with an expression I had never seen before, and just took it from my hand, scribbled on the last page, and thrust it back at me. There were tears in his eyes, I'll never forget that.

"You have done it, 10/10"

He had taught me many things. He was the first teacher in all that time that ever let me know that I could actually do something well . Other teachers knew I was intelligent, and capable, and told me that I was capable of greater things. But none of them ever gave me a reason to do them.

Mr. Holuboff showed me how to challenge myself. I owe him a debt that can never be repaid.

He showed me that I could write, and, with those tears he showed me that what I wrote could touch people's souls. I found out that I could do something well, other than Box. After that, it became possible to believe that I could do other things well. I shudder to think what my life might be like had I never learned that lesson.

I ran into him in the store a couple of days ago, and I greeted him as "Mr. Holuboff" He laughed and said "My name is Peter"

Sorry Mr. Holuboff, but I just can't call you that.

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