Think before you speak

Today’s debacle I brought on myself. Sometimes I’m just not thinking well. All my students wrote their own conceits in my English class after we read John Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” - that’s the one where he compares his marriage to one of those math compasses you use to draw a circle where there’s a pointed end and a pencil at the other end, which sounds stupid (the first thing you need for a conceit) and then he explains how their souls are connected and she is his center that keeps him steady and no matter how far he has to travel for work or whatever, they will always lean towards each other and their love will bring him back home - it’s an awesome explanation (second thing you need for a conceit) that just makes me all melty inside.

So, I challenged my senior advanced classes to write their own conceits. Of note, we used a fictional “our”; the poem we were basing this on was about “our marriage”, so a lot of people wrote conceits about “our love” or “our relationship” that is referring to a fictional relationship between themselves and some random person. This is very important to remember as you read. My favorite for the day was “Our relationship is like a big toe. I take it for granted, almost don’t notice it, but if it were broken, not only would I be in pain, but I couldn’t function like myself.” There was also “revenge is like a kiwi - ugly on the outside, but so sweet in the center” and “our love is like whipped cream - so sweet, but soon will dissolve into nothing.” Have you noticed that my kids are brilliant? Yeah, I think so, too.

So, we had a contest for who could come up with the most bizarre conceit in each class. Yeah, the toe won one period. But for my other class, after everybody has announced theirs, one guy says, “I have another one I want to submit instead. Our relationship is like a sandwich.” And I ask him to explain (because, as I said at the beginning of class, if it’s obvious how they’re connected, it isn’t a conceit), and he says, “I’ll leave it up to your imagination,” and I, being an idiot, say, “You have to explain it or it doesn’t count.” So he smiles and answers me, “Our relationship is like a sandwich. It’s better with my meat.”

And the class loses it to laughter. Of course, there’s a couple people trying to explain how it’s possible that that isn’t dirty, but whatever. So I nod and give a short chuckle, because this is actually a very nice guy who’s said this - not like one of the guys who’s normally rude, or I probably would’ve said something - and then move on to take nominations for who’s going to win “craziest conceit” of the class, hoping the uproar will die down. Fat chance. Of course “Sandwich” gets nominated. I turn back to the class and say, “OK, I’m going to write this down on the nomination list, but there is a difference between a joke and a conceit. A conceit needs to be an extended metaphor. Can you extend that?” And a little voice in the back of my head says, “Did I just ask a student to extend his meat?”  Snickers, and then another student says, “Of course. It’s better in a footlong.”

I’ve never before cracked up laughing so hard I had to turn around and face the board. And that was my day at school today.