THE VELCRO FACTOR

I think this business of “lovability” is a dangerous area for writers; more than a few writers have been seduced into thinking that characters should be charming and lovable. I don’t think so, you know; I think they have to be interesting. They have to have enough of, let’s call it the “Velcro factor.” We have to be able to attach ourselves to them and they must attach themselves to us.
—Charles Baxter, interviewed by Stewart Ikeda

I’ve had the displeasure of working with all kinds of students during my teaching career. From the suburban high school female yapper who confronted me with the following question, “You don’t like me, do you?” —where I answered in front of the whole class, “You don’t give me any reason to like you.” —to the urban male ward of the state and delusional fantasizer working his jimmy from under the student/desk combo. “He’s doing it again,” my all male student class would inform me, and instead of pretending to be oblivious to the situation by letting him clean up in the bathroom afterwards, I decided to let him sit in his own mess.

Lately I’ve been hearing some radio advertisement where the narrator claims his proven training program can help parents alter their children’s behavior, and I can’t help thinking that if this were true, why are so many children “state raised,” and why do so many children advance to prison? Take the female yapper I mentioned, I met her mother at parent/teacher conferences and she proceeded to rip me a new derriere (putting it mildly). “My daughter said you announced to the whole class that you didn’t like her. Is that true?” she asked. I had difficulty answering the question, not because I didn’t have an explanation but because the mother yapped on and on and on just like her daughter. I’m willing to bet the daughter went to college, and perhaps earned a degree or met someone within her new social circle and married and had children and continued the vicious cycle of yappers. I’m willing to bet her chances of prison were nil.

As for my little circle jerk, it didn’t take him long to figure out that he could ask for permission prior to working his jimmy, which in turn meant that he could work his jimmy elsewhere and clean up immediately after his fantasy. His actions were always determined by mine. If I refused him a potty break early, I and my all male students were punished with his private moment. So just exactly who was training whom? And if I had to guess to his current whereabouts, he probably graduated to criminal sexual conduct and is sporting a prison number across his back. Still, looking back, I wish both of them would have just zipped it, but for how long I don't know.