Re: Responses to Terrorism

[cj <jeney@GRIFFON.MWSC.EDU>]

I cannot presume to counsel or provide therapy for my students. It's not my
job, I'm not qualified, and I'm probably more upset than they are... they
have the beautiful callousness of youth to prevent them from becoming the
kind of quaking puddle that I am when faced with this kind of event.

So I just turned on the LCD projector, tuned into CNN, and let my Web
Authoring students watch it. Most of them stayed. We invited the FYC class
next door to come in and watch with us. I did paper work, made copies,
checked some html code I wanted them to look at next time -- anything to
keep from having to look at the pictures. I wasn't ready.

But then it was time for the literature class... they did not want to talk
about crushed buildings or crashed planes. They all came to class, even
though they didn't have to, and they all stayed, even though I told them
they could go if they wanted to. One asked politely if she could answer her
cell phone -- her brother's national guard unit was on standby. He called
during class, to tell her he was shipping out soon.

Together we made it through a sedate and pleasant discussion of scansion,
syntax, diction -- dactyls and anapests, and some e e cummings ("Me up at
does") and then we read "Let me not to the marriage of true minds...."

Such impediments. I could not teach, only be a human among humans, we clung
so pathetically to our intellect and our grammars of wit, and hoped that
when the hour was up, the door would open, the bad dream would be gone, and
that Raeann's cell phone would un-ring.

CeeJ
9/11/01

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CJ Jeney, Assistant Professor of English
Dept. of English, Foreign
Languages and Journalism
Missouri Western State College
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