tfph

                               THE VIEW FROM THE BACK
(Written and posted 9 October 2001)

       I have been a back-row sitter for as long as I can remember. In the lower elementary grades, we were seated in alphabetical order, with kids with “A” surnames seated in front. When your surname begins with “S”, and you are seated in alphabetical order, inevitably you end up being seated in the rear of the class.
       There tends to be a presumption that the kids in the front are the braniacs, and the kids in the back are dim, stupid slackers. Unfortunately, most of the kids that I knew that fit that description tended to have names at the end of the alphabet, so even when sitting alphabetically, the kids in the back did tend to be dim, stupid, slackers. Being one who sat in the back and was at the end of the alphabet, I was viewed as a dim, stupid slacker. The advantage of this is that when you are viewed as a dim, stupid slacker no one expects anything of you, and when there are no expectations, you are left alone. When you are left to your own devices, you tend to pass the time any way you know how: playing cards; sleeping; watching others.
       When I entered high school, I learned that you had to earn the privilege of being ignored in the back row. My high school geometry teacher, Father Vanderhaar, a tall German Jesuit with a very sharp tongue and a yardstick that he was not afraid to use, assigned seating based on test scores--the higher the test score, the farther back you got to sit. In Father Vanderhaar’s class, sitting in the front subjected you to verbal abuse. Rising to the occasion, and having been spoiled being left alone for my academic career, I rose to the challenge and snared the seat in the far back corner. Being left alone gave me the time to contemplate my good fortune that I did not sit in the front row like poor Joe Mulligan. Joe, who was a decent enough fellow, was also goofy enough to incur Father’s wrath on a daily basis. “Mulligan! You have diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain!” After verbally chastising poor Joe, Father would strike Joe’s desk, within millimeters of Joe’s fingers, hand, or whatever body part was closest, with his yardstick. Joe was never the same after Geometry. He always had this traumatized look about him.
       In Spanish, I used my choice seat in the far back corner (just the luck of the alphabet) to practice self-hypnosis. I really couldn’t have given a rat about Spanish; after all, I was living in Saint Louis, in the middle of the country. When would I ever need Spanish? (Never did I dream that I would have Spanish-speaking neighbors!)
       In college, seating is done by choice. Of course, after having always been in the back, I sat in the back by choice. It was in college that I really got into people watching, and with it, people ridiculing. What people in the front don’t realize is that if you have any idiosyncrasies, the people in the back will quickly figure them out. In Thermodynamics, for example, I got great pleasure in watching front-rowers misspell words because the non-English speaking teacher misspelled them. (Think for yourselves!) It also provided a great perspective to size up the competition. You could easily identify the kiss-ups, and the know-it-alls. Of course, being totally discounted as a smart-alecky loser gives the back-row inhabitant the element of surprise when it comes to test time. (“I didn’t think he knew how to even tie his own shoe; who would have known that he knew Foundations?!”)
       As a back-rower (and later, as a teacher), I think that the type of student whom I found the most amusing was the know-it-all. You know the type of person-- the one whose hand is constantly up during class; the one who does better than everyone else, who knows that everyone knows, and who still tries to be coy. I remember walking away from class with one such student (let’s call him Woody) after having just gotten back a Foundations test. (Our instructor, Killer Karl, had been teaching the class some 40 years, and had earned the reputation.) I said I had done pretty well (I had a 70); Woody said he had really bombed it. Knowing what the answer would be, I asked what he got. “A 94; I thought I had a 100.” Needless to say, although I do not like guns, at that moment in time I was ready to acquire one.
       By the end of my our last semester, most of our class could not stand this guy. We knew he was smart, and frankly we felt like he was constantly rubbing it in with his constant questions in class (not to mention the arguments with the instructors). Of course, when you breed this kind of resentment, eventually it comes back to bite you. When it came down to selecting officers for the various Civil Engineering clubs, the back-rowers tended to band together and elect one of their own. When it came time to select the project leaders for the class project, the back-rowers were chosen by the professor (they were viewed as easier to get along with). And, the back-rowers dominated the honor rolls. (They weren’t as dumb as they looked.)
       To those of you who think you know it all: Sit down and shut up!! You are irritating those of us who do!