When I was in ninth grade, my social studies teacher assigned our class an essay about careers. We were to choose a career we were considering and write about what made it interesting to us. I was considering about 40 different career paths at the time, but I decided to go with either musician or translator. Then I got a great idea: I’d write about musicians as translators. It struck me that what musicians did was a lot like translating: They took the work of a composer and turned it from notes written on a page into sound that a listener could enjoy. I loved the idea, and I pored over the essay with pride and enthusiasm.
Apparently my teacher, Mr. Jackson, thought it was a good idea, too. In fact, he thought it was such a good idea that I couldn’t possibly have come up with it myself. He handed back the paper back with a D-, and the words, “This wasn’t your own work.”
I was stunned at this accusation, especially since it was based on nothing but the fact that I had written a good essay. After class, I politely explained to Mr. Jackson that I’d come up with the idea on my own, and all of the writing was mine. He said simply, “No, it isn’t.”
For the next twenty minutes, Mr. Jackson and I argued—if you can call a weeping 14-year-old begging a teacher to believe her an argument. I held the paper to my chest, tears sheeting down my face. I swore that I had written every word. Mr. Jackson busied himself erasing the blackboard and gathering his papers. “I give you my word that this is my writing!” I cried. He didn’t look at me. He pulled on his coat. “You, young lady, are a liar,” he said. “And a cheat.” With that, he walked from the room, and I fled the school in humiliation and despair.
I arrived home sobbing, barely able to tell my horrified mother what had happened. She listened, her lips pressed together in the thin, firm line they formed when she was too angry to yell. “Get in the car,” she told me. “We’re going to get your father.”
My dad was working in our apricot orchard that afternoon. My mother drove slowly along the outside of our land, peering down row after row of trees, until we spied Dad working in the distance, a shovel in his hand. I stayed in the car and watched as Mom marched through the trees, clutching my paper. I could see her showing Dad Mr. Jackson’s comments and gesturing elaborately. Then I saw my dad throw his shovel to the ground, grab the page out of my mother’s hand, and storm toward the car.
My father was a mild man. He was also someone who would never have challenged a teacher about a grade. He’d always said it was a teacher’s job to assign grades, and who was he to tell a person how to do their job? But this wasn’t about grades. It was about integrity.
I never heard what my father said to Mr. Jackson that afternoon. I was waiting anxiously at home while they met. He later told me Mr. Jackson denied using the word “liar” (in other words, he himself lied), but admitted he’d jumped to a conclusion. He scribbled a two-word apology at the bottom of my paper—an apology without sincerity or remorse—and changed the D- to an A-, as if my essay, which had been so good he couldn’t believe I wrote it, wasn’t good enough for an A. Even at fourteen, I realized what that “minus” was: a pathetic attempt by a small man to hold on to a tiny shred of power.
I’ve often wondered what I would have done if my father hadn’t stood up for me that day. What impact would that accusation have had on my life, on my love for learning, on my desire to excel? What happens to a kid who is called a cheat for the sin of doing good work? Thanks to my Dad—my defender, my hero—I never had to face that.
Flash forward forty years: My dad, a frail, elderly man, and I, a writer. My second and third books had recently been accepted for publication, and I’d was receiving a writing award at my college. My father, nearly ninety, was barely able to walk into the hall where I read a chapter of my book and accepted my award. He would die before either of my books were in print, and would never see the dedication in Writing as a Sacred Path: “For my father.” But he saw me read in front of that audience. He saw me receive that award. Few things have made me happier than knowing that, at the end of his life, I could make him proud.
And as we walked from the ceremony, my arm linked in his, what did Dad whisper in my ear? “I just wish Mr. Jackson could have seen this.”