The Blurt  

"The boy kicked the ball."

Father Sargeant gave us his rictus grin, then turned to the board. He wrote his go-to phrase for all things grammatical in neat, flowing script. Stepped back, stared at it. Then he repeated, with precise British diction: "The boy kicked the ball."

He spun around, cassock flying, and pointed a bony finger at the kid sitting next to me. "Davies. If you were to insert an adjective into that sentence, where would you place it?"

Poor Davies. His eyes seemed to vibrate, and I could see and hear him swallow noisily. He was nervous, and best of all, he didn't know the answer. In the next row over, Headingly smirked. I smirked. Everyone in the classroom smirked.

Father Sargeant let the silence mature. Finally: "Davies?" He drew out 'Davies', stretching two syllables- we knew about syllables- into a five-second word. He crooked his head, a hawk circling its next meal.

"Umm..."

This would be good: he was going to guess, and knowing Davies, he would guess wrong. Or 'incorrectly', as Father Sargeant would say.

"One of two places, Davies." That was Father Sargeant trying to be helpful, sort of like an executioner suggesting you get comfortable as you settle your head on the block.

"Umm.. in front of the ball?"

"In front of 'the', or in front of 'ball'?" The talons unsheathed.

Now, Davies wasn't stupid, he just didn't know the answer. You could see him thinking, and there would be a certain logic to what he was thinking, because I had come to the same conclusion. "'Ball'," he said, and there was even a hint of confidence to his reply.

"Good for you," Father Sargeant said, and smiled again. He stepped closer to Davies. "And... what could that adjective be-", he turned quickly to his left, "...Palmer?"

Palmer was as startled as the rest of us, although he shouldn't have been. It was one of Father Sargeant's favourite tricks, everyone expecting one thing, then he spits it out in a different direction.

"Uh... 'bad'?" Give it to Palmer; he was quick. Probably wrong, but at least he was quick about it.  'Probably' because I wasn't sure myself.

You could almost hear the sigh in Father Sargeant's voice. "Well, I guess 'bad' if the ball had been particularly mischievous that day." (I actually got the joke-  a decade later, as I was drifting off to sleep).

Father Sargeant walked back to his desk and looked out over the class. I felt a twinge of sympathy for the man, and wondered once again why he had chosen to teach grammar to a yowling pack of Grade 8 boys (or 'a pack of yowling Grade 8 boys'; you could move adjectives all over the place) in a dingy classroom in a boarding school in the middle of the Canadian prairies. Maybe it was some kind of 'penance', a word I had learned in Composition. Apparently, Anglicans- and Catholics, too, I had heard- were big on penance, although I never saw the point.

You didn't want to mess with Father Sargeant: he was a fair man, we all recognized that, but he could lock you into place with a look so icy that you wondered if he was channeling some darker force (he was, after all, a minister). It was in our own best interests to avoid his displeasure at our grammatical ignorance or general lack of decorum. He had no tolerance for anything off-topic or off-colour. Especially off-colour: no swearing, no blasphemy and never, ever any mention of sex.

But other than his cold anger, he seemed to be a good man who enjoyed the spiritual tranquility of a simple life leading Mattins and evening prayer. Less tranquil was the part about teaching grammar to 13 year-old wildings struggling with it's vs. its.

Father Sargeant had his quirks. He was always hammering home the importance of patience in whatever we did, from the classroom to everyday life. The way Father Sargeant had it, patience was a mark of good character. "In whist," he would say, "it's best to play the long game." Didn't quite know what whist was, but I kind of understood what he meant.

He also had a weird sense of humour. His idea of 'great good fun' was to confuse us with obscure words and unusual grammatical construction. Toward the end of class on the very first day of Introductory Grammar, he fixed us with his tight grin and said, "Tintinnabulation?" No one had a clue what he was talking about. His grin got wider. "Davies, would you tintinnabulate? McKay? Palmer- tintinnabulation?" Then he shrugged in mock despair, and sent someone off to ring the big school bell that signaled a change of class.

This went on for two weeks before someone had the bright idea to actually look it up. And yes, it took us two weeks. Of course, once we knew what it meant, the etymology of tintinnabulation (there's a phrase you never thought you'd hear) became a lesson in itself- which was his point in the first place.

Father Sargeant also had great good fun with 'the boy kicked the ball'. It was his favourite tool in the grammatical toolbox: subject, verb, object, ripe for a thousand variations. The boy kicked the red ball (adjective!). The small boy kicked the red ball (two adjectives!!). The boy was kicking the ball (past progressive, but also present. Maybe). The boy will be kicking the ball (future progressive, not to be confused with conditional progressive, the boy would be kicking the ball).

Which brings us to 'the blurt'.

It was with his Cheshire cat grin, that one day Father Sargeant said, "This afternoon, we will discuss the pluperfect." And out of the clear blue of the western sky, he threw us a change-up: "We will begin with this phrase: The man rode the horse."

The brightest of us caught on right away. Hey, subject/verb/object- works exactly the same way as 'the boy kicked the ball'.

But some of us- well, one of us- had his head stuck so far up another realm of reality that the oddest thing bubbled to the surface in all its sulphurous glory. Which meant that Mr. What-On-God's-Green-Earth-Were-You-Thinking?, Mr. No-Impulse-Control had a witty rejoinder to 'The man rode the horse'.

And I said it out loud. To the entire class. To an Anglican Chaplain.

I said: "I'd rather ride a woman." Whatever that meant.

Shocked silence doesn't begin to convey it. It was as if a neutron bomb of the moronic had gone off. Everyone stared, and it wasn't that gleeful excitement of watching a classmate crash and burn. This was way beyond that. I saw in their expressions genuine, wide-eyed wonder at witnessing such monumental stupidity. Hell, even I was amazed that something so inappropriate had come out of anyone's mouth, let alone my own. I didn't even know what it really meant, although I knew it was somehow dirty. 

The only one not wide-eyed was Father Sargeant. He was confused: he couldn't have heard that right (correctly), could he? I had a sudden thought: maybe this would finally break his faith. Maybe he would just chuck it all, turn in his cross right here and now, never to believe in a higher power again.

He stared at me for maybe ten seconds, and in that time, worlds wheeled: I would be expelled; I would wind up on the streets; I would get a fatal disease and die young. All future tense, but nothing conditional about any of it.

Then the oddest thing happened; he ignored it. It was as if there had been a momentary interruption in the flow of time before everything went back to normal.

Father Sargeant blinked, then looked at the class. "'The man had ridden the horse", he said. "Define the tense- Jacobs!..."

I learned something that day: sometimes the line between life and death is  exceedingly thin. Sometimes you take another breath because someone else allows you to.

I also learned not to blurt. Don't just say the first thing that pops into your head; wait a heartbeat before verbalizing the (mis)firing of your brain. Of course, there was a whole other field of study possible: where did that thought come from? Or: from where did that thought come?

Years later, I realized that Father Sargeant had played the long game. He had given up his impulse to eviscerate me on the spot; in return, I became what passed for a model student. For the rest of the school year, I didn't step an inch out of line, which for me was a major accomplishment. No goofy blurts, and as far as I remember, no goofy thoughts.

At least in that class.  

 -

 Postscript

Several years ago, I pitched this true short story to the Globe and Mail, which had already run a couple of stories I had written. I got an interesting reply back.

Usually, if a pitch is not ‘picked up’ by a newspaper, it simply doesn’t run. Because of the number of pitches thrown their way, publications don’t have the resources to acknowledge each one. Fair ball, and no one expects otherwise. In this case, though, someone took the time to reply to me, and explain why the publication was not running this piece. In polite terms, they underlined that it would be inappropriate for the publication because of its sexual and misogynistic bent.

That was sort of the point, the humour (to me) coming from a totally inappropriate ‘blurt’, a maybe once-in-a-lifetime social misstep. Even if I didn’t know what I was talking about.

On reflection, and with more perspective under my belt - I still feel the same way.  

 Tom New