A Lexicon of Mine Own: E

Educator. Something I’m not, never have been, never will be. Educators are people who talk a good game but can’t teach their way out of a paper bag. They write screeds about teaching and speak in hypersyllabic educationese. But they can’t do the one thing they’re supposed to do, which is teach something to somebody. They’re just too hifalutin’ for that, too pestered with theories, too besotted with principles and guidelines and curricular goals. Should anybody ever see my name on a starchy academic paper along the lines of “Tertiary Curricular Outcomes Within Modular Unit-Based Referential Syllabii” I ask only that you make it a clean shot, just once neatly through the head.

Electronics. Whence my fascination with things with plugs, switches, buttons, spinners, sliders, lights, doodads, doohickeys, and thingamabobs? I was never cut out to be an electronics engineer, although I enjoyed festooning my teenage room with control units and light switches and the like. How I avoided electrocuting myself, I’ll never know. But I do love my electronic comforts, and I’m a rabid early adopter. I also bought into some dead-end tech—laser discs, for example. But no matter. I’m not the slightest bit intimidated by gizmos. I get them, I enjoy them, I use them, and I weep not when the time comes to send them on their merry way.

Elementary School. I went to four elementary schools, thanks to my family’s peregrinations over the years. First up was Shadow Oaks Elementary in the Spring Branch section of Houston. I see via Google Earth that it’s still there, but judging from the street view, it’s a great big place now whereas in my day it was just your basic little suburban elementary school. It was a good one, though, benefitting from the spunky tax base of a rapidly-growing and upwardly-mobile community. After that came Westcliff Elementary School in Fort Worth. My memory of Westcliff is hazy but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was only so-so and it was overcrowded. A brand-new school opened up nearer our house, J. P. Moore Elementary, and that’s where I attended the fifth grade. The coolest thing about Moore was that it was air conditioned—manna from heaven in a plains town like Fort Worth. We took off for Dallas, where I finished elementary school at Preston Hollow Elementary. By any rational standard Preston Hollow was a lousy school, but I loved it. For whatever reason, little Scott the Universal Outcast was downright popular at Preston Hollow. What was different about me? I was the same geeky, introverted, undersized kid I had been in Fort Worth. But my classmates in Dallas cleaved me to their collective bosom. That year in Dallas was tough for my parents—they were within a hair’s breadth of going under financially—but it was my favorite place so far. Memories of Dallas helped me get through the next few years in Indiana, where I set new standards for introversion and aversion.

Elgar. More people need to get to know Sir Edward. Imagine Brahms spiced up with a severe persecution complex, saddle him with a demanding religious faith that put him at odds with most of his colleagues, and then give him a patriotic edge. That’s Elgar. In my humble opinion, Elgar’s first symphony ranks right up there with Brahms; his violin concerto may be the finest since Beethoven; those oratorios—churchy though they may be—are utterly best of breed. I wish Americans could get over their tendency to pooh-pooh English music. It isn’t all pastorales threaded through with folk tunes in Aeolian mode, you know.

English. I am grateful that English is my native language. What a glorious treasure it is! Unlike culturally-rooted languages that evolved to meet the needs of one primary constituency, English is a polyglot tongue that has cheerfully absorbed influences far and wide. So it’s full of French, courtesy of the Normans. And it’s powerfully Germanic at its core, courtesy of the Anglo-Saxons. It’s full of Greek, courtesy of the arts. It’s full of Latin, courtesy of just about everybody. Its analytical syntax prefers to hammer out meaning with word order instead of old-timey inflections, allowing for endless shades of ambiguity. Even everyday English bubbles and teems with metaphor, almost every word in any given sentence conjuring up a host of connotations. It’s a crying shame that not enough students are being exposed to English; instead, their English teachers encourage postmodernist deconstructions of reading assignments. But a thorough knowledge of English grammar and syntax is a powerful tool and a fast-track to the upper classes of American and English society. Henry Higgins knew what he was doing when he claimed that he could transform guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle into a lady by the simple expedient of teaching her how to speak proper English.

Enlightenment. Buddhists tend to become fixated on the idea of full Enlightenment, although to this day I’ve never had all that clear of an idea about what Enlightenment actually is. That various traditions tend to describe it in contradictory terms doesn’t help the matter any. Some folks seem so dang materialistic about it all, almost as though if you perform A well enough and often enough, Enlightenment will be sure to follow. Honestly, sometimes it all sounds like Linus van Pelt insisting that the Great Pumpkin will surely choose his pumpkin patch. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see, says Linus. On the whole, I’d rather not worry about such things. I’ll take my Enlightenment where I can get it—those flicks and sparkles of understanding that can pop up unexpectedly. I’m certainly not going to fret about the precise relationship of shunyata to satori or any of the rest of it.

Episcopal Church. The Church of WASP, America’s dialectical variant on the CofE, and my nominal religion for a few years when I was a little shaver. We Foglesongs cast off our working-class aprons and donned lily-white Episcopalean garb when my parents opted to embrace suburban respectability upon our move to Fort Worth. The Episcopal Church has ever stood as the Religion of Upward Mobility, and that one concern was calling the shots for my parents. They kept it up long enough to establish an unimpeachable WASP cred. I went to confirmation class and memorized just enough vapid mumbo-jumbo to avoid flunking out in disgrace. Not that anybody ever flunks confirmation class. The church isn’t about to lose a potential soul, i.e. contributor to the Sunday plate, over something as trivial as comprehension. It didn’t help any that my parents believed neither jot nor tittle of Episcopal or any other flavor of Christianity. Perfect they were not, but the folks weren’t dummies and they knew a hawk from a handsaw. As did my sister and myself. I remember asking my mother just precisely why I was being asked to spew out the random nonsense so carefully exposited in those twee confirmation class pamphlets. I’ll hand it to mamma-san: she laid it on the line. It’s crap, she said, total bullshit. But your Dad can’t sell much insurance unless we’re Episcopaleans just like his customers. So just tell Father Barnes what he wants to hear, OK? So I did. I was confirmed. Sunday mornings I suffocated in that stifling boredom that Protestantism dishes out with such effortless expertise. I was probably the worst acolyte in the history of Trinity Episcopal Church, Fort Worth, Texas. I skipped every rehearsal and so when Sunday morning came around I didn’t have a clue as to plot, dialogue, or blocking. Hold the candle and walk down the aisle, they said. Turn left at the altar, and then stand over there. So I held and I walked and I turned and I stood. I didn’t know what to do with the fucking candle so I just let it burn. The assistant priest guy took it and plopped it into the appropriate holder. I guess I was supposed to do that myself. Thus was I initiated into the blessed mysteries of the Christian faith: hold this, walk that way, turn left, stand there, let the guy put the candle in its holder thingie.

I don’t think I did acolyte stuff for more than a few months. Even the Episcopal Church has its limits. I doubt I was actually fired—you don’t do that to a ten-year-old kid, not unless you enjoy preaching to an empty house after that kid’s mom has told everybody in Tarrant County what a bunch of heartless bastards you are. I think they just started encouraging me to miss services. The issue became moot before long since we took neither them nor their cockamamie delusions seriously. We got bored. It was ever so much nicer to sleep in on Sundays and then help dad make omelets and biscuits for brunch while mother supervised from her perch on the family room couch. And no more contributing to the upkeep of a temple to superstition and ignorance.

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