musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.


When I was young and growing up in a 1950ies Winnipeg school, it didn’t occur to me to categorize the unusual people I encountered there. There were those who seemed to behave themselves in class, and those who didn’t. I suppose there were variations among the disruptors: some -those who usually sat at the back of the room- actively defied routine and the authority of the teacher; others were quietly…well, different. Because I had yet to wear corrective eye glasses, I was a front-row student so I could see the blackboard; I could barely even see the back row group. And, we front-rowers didn’t dare ‘act out’ with the teacher just an arm’s length away -but anyway they were mostly girls who saved their misbehaviour for the halls where we were forbidden to run and scream. None of us had even heard of autism…

Charlie was perhaps a little strange, however. My memory of him was of a tall, thin, red-haired boy who sometimes huddled out of the wind in the front door alcove of the school; there was often a crowd around him, because he would take out his glass eye for a fee so we could see what was behind it. I think he used the money for candy at the little mom-and-pop grocery store just down the street -at least I often saw him there. But apart from his ocular idiosyncrasy, he behaved himself in our class, and as a mid-rower, seldom raised his hand to answer questions unless he was singled out by the teacher.

And then there was Maris who used to participate in the Field Day the school held every spring (it’s now Sport’s day, or something). His specialty was running each race in bare feet because his father told him it was how they used to do it in Greece. Everybody used to line up around the track to cheer him on because it was a cinder track and it even hurt to walk on it let alone run on it in bare feet. Maris routinely won every race; I think there’s was even a plaque dedicated to him at the school.

But apart from the blond curly-haired girl with huge buck teeth whose arm always shot up and waved if the teacher asked a question, after which she would giggle insanely when she was picked to answer, my memory of those days is rather selective.

Of course, I remember that the back row guys picked on me because my arm also shot up at the slightest hint of a question; I was short, and had curly auburn hair which would tangle each time I ran from the class bully -I often teased him with various unusual Shakespearean insults. I had perfected what I called the ‘border collie run’ that zigzagged randomly through the soccer field; I was never caught… Other than that, and my later failed attempts to establish an after-school vocabulary club, I remember myself as pretty normal. It was 50ies Winnipeg, eh?

Nowadays I think that after a while of living with yourself, you get pretty used to how you react to things; to who you are; to how, no matter your determination, you obstinately cling to those faults that only others seem to see. It was probably reasonable that I never had a large cadre of friends. That’s what I figure, anyway.

Even so, after what seemed like a lifetime later, I did manage to find a roommate in university for a year. My parents had objected to my determination to choose my own destiny, and threatened to cut off my university tuition if I didn’t pay lip-service to their demands. In fear of an unfunded interregnum I ended up rooming with Glen in a rickety three-room house near the campus. By the time my mother had seen the error of her ways, it was too late to change my digs.

As memory serves, Glen was a studious boy whose hair, despite his youth, was thinning. His wire-framed spectacles that always threatened to fall off his face endowed him with a sort of preternatural professorial air, that I found difficult to countenance for the first month or so; I mean he seemed even more unpopular than me with girls, so we’d end up watching TV together on weekends, although barely talking. Two shy (or was it odd) people living together should have a lot in common, I guess, but while I leaned toward Philosophy and Literature, and perhaps the ability to escape into Journalism if all else failed, Glen was mathematical and was majoring in Science, or something; he had a memory like an encyclopedia and so if (sorry, when) I had some questions about my courses, he broke things down into little biteable segments for me.

On one of the times which cemented the legend about him in the only class we shared together, it came to the suspenseful end of the term and its inevitable exam. I can’t for the life of me remember the course, except that my classmates and I had not understood very much about it -certainly not enough to write an exam for which the professor declared a need for a passing mark or else a course failure for the months we had spent scribbling our notes and underlining passages in the assigned text book.

So vacant from our concerns was the professor that she demanded a minimum score of 60% to count as a pass. That didn’t bother Glen, of course; he fully expected 100%; and he even walked out of the examination room early with a smile. The rest of us, despite an extra 30 minute gift from the prof, were still sitting there at the end wondering if a failure in her course would prejudice the university and not allow us to graduate.

Apparently, one of the more assertive students went to her office after the exam and wondered if she would consider giving us a break on her marking. As he described his meeting, the professor agreed to a little leniency. There were something like 125 multiple choice questions, but she would mark it as if there were, in fact 100. All we would need would be to get 60/125 correct to pass.

I have to say that sounded reasonable; a fair compromise; the rest of the class agreed. But Glen was not so sure: he was confident he’d got at least 120 of those questions correct. And when she posted the results a few days later, he marched right up to the professor’s office with a complaint.

He had apparently only answered 113 of the questions correctly and was livid that the prof wouldn’t give him 100% on the test since he got way more than 100 correct and, after all, she had agreed to mark it out of 100.

“But you didn’t get 100%, “she answered, upset that he hadn’t been delighted at her decision to lower her standards for the sake of the class.

As he angrily recounted her response that night in our room, what really upset him, was that he was sure he’d got even more than 113 correct, and threatened to report her to the Board of Governors of the university. I’m not sure if he did; it was the end of term and he didn’t enroll for the fall session. One of my classmates told me Glen had been involved a car accident a week or so later on his way home; I haven’t heard from him since he left.

I eventually moved on to another university for post-grad studies, so I suppose it all worked out. Anyway, I apparently managed to get 70 correct answers in that exam by randomly ticking the boxes, so I think I’d have made a great Philosopher; I only managed to get into Medicine, though. Go figure, eh?

I still miss Glen’s belief in certainties, however; the world could use a few more eccentrics like him, but I don’t think he would have made any more friends than me in school -especially if he’d had to sit in the front row…

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