Entry 13. After class

I don’t remember much of the rest of the roll call from the day Buffalo Springsteen first appeared in my class, except that the boy who made fun of Buffalo’s name turned out to be named Carson McGillicudy, so I guess he knew something about lightening up over his parents’ naming decisions. In fact the laugh over his name was bigger than the one over hers, given the circumstances.

The dustup between Carson and Buffalo gave me a good opportunity to segue into the class themes.

“Now we had a little incident here a minute ago, and before I get into the syllabus, I’m going to use it as what we educator types like to call a teaching moment,” I told the class. “Buffalo here had a difference of opinion with young Mr. McGillicudy, and she chose not to use diplomacy in resolving those differences.

“I’m going to make the proposition that Buffalo Springsteen accomplished nothing by going after poor Carson here physically. No, actually, I’m going to say that she produced exactly the opposite of what she hoped to accomplish. What do you think, McGillicudy?”

“I don’t know, Dr. Kaliber,” Carson replied ruefully. “I don’t think I’m ever going to call her Buffy again.” We all laughed at that.

“Yes, but here’s the most important thing about that — did she change your mind about whether ‘Buffy’ is an appropriate nickname for someone named Buffalo?”

“No, of course not.”

“You’ve got it precisely correct,” I said. “She didn’t change your beliefs in any way, shape or form — in fact, I believe even after she did her best to persuade you, you used the word ‘psycho.’” Even she smiled.

I went on to mention a quote from Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government — the one about how the state “is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior strength.” I outlined my core belief that people will use force to win an argument, especially when they have a government at their command, but they don’t actually ever win the argument.

“My point is that violence might force people to change their behavior, but it can’t change their minds,” he said. “The most brutal regimes in the history of humanity have all faded to dust eventually, because you can’t brutalize an idea out of existence.”

“Hang on a second,” McGillicudy persisted. “A lot of those brutal regimes were overthrown violently. I mean, how else do you get rid of violent oppression if not by violence?”

“Good question. That’s a big chunk of the syllabus, and we’ll get into that in depth as we go along. For now, let me suggest that you recognize the names of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King faster than the names of Nathuram Godse or James Earl Ray. The names of the men who fought for freedom without raising a hand in violence live on in our memories more than the names of their assassins.”

“We remember Hitler and Raynoldizon, too,” Buffalo interjected.

“True,” I sighed, “but we sure don’t admire them the way we do Gandhi or King or Thoreau. No one wants a Hitler or Raynoldizon in charge — in fact, the nastiest insults politicians usually throw at each other are comparisons to tyrants like that. They never shake their fist and say, ‘My opponent is just like Gandhi.’ Tyrants are the bad example; nonviolent resistance is the good example.

“I’m off on a tangent. My point is simply that you can force Carson not to call you by a nickname, but you can’t force him to change his mind. Changing minds is a more complicated process. That’s why so often you’ll find that a violent revolution only results in a new violent regime, sometimes more violent than the old one.”

I’d like to say I was bold enough to stop Buffalo Springsteen after class that first day and launch into what now seems to be an inevitable courtship, but truth be known, it was a week or two into the semester that I caught up with her as she walked purposefully across the campus – she always walked as if she knew exactly where she was going.

We exchanged greetings and small pleasantries, and then I came to the point.

“Buffalo, it’s extremely inappropriate for me to ask given our teacher-student relationship, but –”

“I’d love to.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re asking me out, right?” she said with the hint of a smile, a shake of her flaming red hair and a twinkle in those remarkable sea-green eyes. “I’d love to.”

We worked out a time and place to meet for coffee the next afternoon, then she leaned up, brushed my cheek with her lips, said “See you then,” and glided away, looking back once more to share that knee-buckling twinkle.

Entry 14