The legend of Smedley (revisited)
I had told the story of Smedley a few days ago in one of the posts that got accidentally deleted. It was a story I felt needed to be retold, if only to acknowledge the inspiration that was given to me by an old school chum.
His story begins in the September of my eighth grade year at an unnamed parochial (read that “Christian”) school. Smedley was different from other kids. Smedley wasn’t born in the sterility of a maternity ward. He wasn’t even born in a cab or ambulance on the way to the hospital. No, nothing that happened in his life was what I would call normal. You see, Smedley was born in the first few minutes of our eighth grade physical science class.
We had a physical science teacher who was a little like a substitute teacher. You know the way kids mess with a substitute? Well, this guy was like a sub, but better, because he was there everyday—almost begging us to screw with his head.
In the parochial school we attended, it was not uncommon for a teacher to begin a class period by saying a prayer. Some of the teachers would even ask the students if there were any special concerns that needed mention in the prayer. The poor permanent sub who taught physical science was one of these teachers. And one day, early in the school year, as he solicited prayer requests, one of my classmates (I’ll call him Pat) raised his hand.
Pat proceeded to tell us all about his friend from the neighborhood, Smedley, who had been involved in a freak accident and was now in the hospital, awaiting an emergency kidney transplant (or something to that effect). Were it not for the beginnings of a smile forming on Pat’s lips as the teacher sympathetically listened, some of us in the class might have believed the story also. But the teacher seemed to buy the whole thing.
As days went by, the science teacher would ask Pat for updates on Smedley, which Pat would willingly supply. As the stories got stranger, we in the class had more difficulty suppressing our laughter. At one point, the teacher scolded a few students for laughing at such a serious matter, but he never scolded Pat for the fantastic stories he was telling. To Pat’s credit, he got better at selling the stories as he told more of them. One of Smedley’s unfortunate incidents involved a transplant surgeon leaving a scalpel inside of him.
Thinking back, it was probably not that funny, at least the laughs were mostly in poor taste, but that’s what often happens with a roomful of thirteen-year-old’s. To our knowledge, the science teacher, who left the school after that one year, never caught on; but then, that may have just been the faulty perspective of our naïveté.
But Smedley isn’t just important for the myriad injuries and illnesses he suffered. He shares a common thread with my first public poetry display. For the very young man who had breathed life into Smedley’s myth was also instrumental in helping me “get published” for the first time, as a junior high”poet.”
This event sprang from a short verse I had scribbled in a study hall. The subject of my rhyme was a girl in our class who was quite unpopular, and the poem was fairly mean towards her. Of course, I never intended for anyone to read it; I was just bored at the time.
But my buddy Pat changed all that. He caught a glimpse of the derogatory little limerick, and instantly saw potential, so he confiscated it. I was mildly shocked to later find my poem posted on the bulletin board of our homeroom, from which it became a short-lived favorite of most of my classmates—until our teacher discovered it, and the handwriting was soon recognized as mine.
The funny thing is, I had gotten in trouble during my school years, but I didn’t really get into trouble for this particular escapade. But I remember it better than most others. The principal only gave me a lecture about how I was making poor use of my ability (he also made me apologize to the girl who was the subject of the poem). And I remember feeling bad about it for a while.
To this day, I think about that episode, and I wonder about that girl. I often wonder if she remembers that poem, or if it just blends into the countless assaults I know she suffered at the hands of her classmates. I know I saw her in the mall years ago, with a young child. I almost said something to her, but I didn’t.
I wondered if all the slings and arrows had faded into her subconscious, where she might prefer to leave them—unstirred by an impromptu greeting from someone who had once been part of the assault.
I hoped that her world had changed, that the child I saw by her side was part of a happier life than the one a bunch of junior high students had done their best to ruin. (-It was around this point in my life that I first studied Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Writer,” which may have had something to do with my philosophical thoughts at the time.)
This is more than I had intended to write, so I’m not too sure where this is headed now. Perhaps I meant to declare this set of memories as a sort of “rainbow” reminder—the promise that I will never again (attempt to) destroy someone with poetry.
But that just sounds silly…
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