Sometimes you can screw up badly and still be glad it happened.

Instead of unfolding into the fall of 1971, my high school junior year was more of an unravelling, beginning with registration day.

I’d chosen Art as my career path at the end of my previous sophomore year. My vision on this Monday morning in late August focused entirely on signing up for Art 101, second period. My best friend and I had steady girlfriends, and the four of us planned to sign up with Mrs. Worthen’s third period English class so we could go to lunch together afterwards.

I journeyed from classroom to classroom on registration day, signing up with each teacher, beginning with Art. For no particular reason, I left English for last. 

Somewhere around noon I strode into Mrs. Worthen’s classroom to complete my quest and cap off a successful day.

“May I help you?” Mrs. Worthen said without looking up from her paperback.

“I’m here to sign up for third period English,” I said.

“Most of my classes are full,” she said with the slightest hint of annoyance. She placed a bookmark in her paperback, set it aside and reached for a clipboard. Adjusting her glasses, she fanned through several pages and checked her third period chart. “Yes,” she said, setting her clipboard aside and picking up her paperback, “That class is full.” 

I was dumbstruck. This can’t happen– it’ll ruin everything!

“I have to be in this class,” I argued. “My girlfriend, is in this class. All my friends are in this class.”

“Doctor Sample still has plenty of room on his roster,” she said matter-of-factly, still not bothering to make eye contact. “I suggest you sign up over there.”

Her entire demeanor spoke volumes– I didn’t matter. Had I somehow disrespected her? Was she punishing me for coming to her last—

Did she just say ‘Doctor Sample’? Doc Sample? She may as well’ve told me I had an incurable disease. No one wanted to be in one of Doc Sample’s classes. What kind of name is Doc anyway? I’d heard rumors he was crazy. I’d seen him shuffling through the hallways– a short, white-haired guy with liver spots. He wore his pants so high above his portly waist his white shins glowed above his thin, dark socks. Everyone hated Doc. No one ever survived one of his classes. 

The full weight of my dilemma came crashing down. Panic swept over me. I’d get held back. I wouldn’t graduate with my friends next year. I’d have to take my junior year over again, all because I waited too late to sign up for English. This was horribly surreal.

I wasn’t leaving Mrs. Worthen’s classroom, leaving was unacceptable. I had to get in this class, there was no alternative. I stood in front of her desk and agonized for perhaps fifteen seconds, formulating just the right words that would get me on that rollsheet.

“Please, I have to be in this class. Can’t you take just one more?” 

Again she picked up her bookmark, placed it in her book and set it aside. She finally made eye contact, long enough to ask me to leave.

When I met up with my friends in the hall they reported success where I had failed. I broke the news.

“Doc Sample?” my best friend said, “You can’t be in Doc Sample’s class, no one has ever passes his class.”

“C’mon,” my girlfriend said, grabbing my arm, “We’ll all four plead together.”

The four of us went back to Mrs. Worthen’s room and begged. One could, unfortunately, wring more lightening from a snowball than sympathy from that woman. Her only suggestion was that we all four sign up in Doc’s class.

My support team crumbled at that line in the sand. They’d fight for me, but they certainly weren’t going to fail for me. 

I skulked into the hallway, a condemned man.

 “Well, we can still meet up for lunch,” my girlfriend consoled.

It seemed an immeasurably small victory. Like telling someone on death row they can have anything they want for their last meal.

“Guess I better get this over with,” I said. I waved to my friends and trudged toward Doc Sample’s room up on the second floor, which now seemed like the dark tower of some foreboding castle. 

As I made my way down the long corridor leading to Doc Sample’s classroom, the lights dimmed momentarily, up and down the hallway for no specific reason. I had a vision of some poor inmate getting to ride ‘Old Sparky’, or a mad scientist trying to jump-start a recently unearthed cadaver. 

I noticed the sign next to a door halfway down the hall–Dr. Everett Sample, Phd. I paused. This can’t be happening. 

I wondered if cellblocks had their inmate’s names outside each door? I took a deep breath and walked inside the last door I ever wanted to pass through.. 

“Come in, come in,” a voice encouraged excitedly from across the room. It was as comic as a henchman standing at the top of the gallows, saying something like,’Come on up. Watch your step– don’t trip. How’s your day so far?’

“Eh, how’s your day going so far?” a pudgy little man said with a smile, while waving me over to his desk as if he knew I didn’t want to be here. Of course he knew, and he seemed to revel in my pain.

His Cajun accent sounded about as deep in the South as one could get without falling in the Gulf. Doc looked more like the bumbling assistant of some mad scientist than a doctor of anything.

“Eh… C’mon over,” he waved with a grin, ” I won’t bite.”

I shuffled up to his desk. I didn’t want to do this.

“What class you looking for?” He sounded deeply interested. Why is he so perky? Do I look lost? I suppose I was, in a way. Lost– with no chance of getting back on course. No chance of survival. 

I handed Doc my schedule and forced the words from my mouth, “Third…Period…Junior…English.”

“Oh, yeaaaaah. I can get you fixed up. You came to da’ right place.” He took my registration card, signed the only blank line remaining, wrote my name in his book, and the deed was done– he now had full possession of my soul.

It was official– I was going to fail. I’d have to take summer school. I wouldn’t be able to get a summer job and buy a car. I’d be the only senior next year driven to school by his mom.

I took my registration form and moved toward the door. 

“Eh– See you Monday mornin’,” he said with a short wave. I met his smile with half of one because I didn’t want to be rude to the man who could ruin my life. His sincerity seemed genuine, which told me he enjoyed failing his students.

Sigh.

At dinner that night the discussion centered on registration day. My brother would be a senior that year. I hadn’t a clue what classes he rattled on about.

“Darrel?”

My mom was speaking to me. “Hmmm? What?” I replied.

“I asked what your day was like?”

I mentioned my misfortune.

“Doc Sample?” my brother chortled. “No one survives Doc Sample. How could you be dumb enough to sign up with Doc Sample?”

I explained the day’s events.

“What a moron. Everyone knows you gotta sign up your English class first thing, so you don’t wind up in Doc’s class.”  

“Don’t call your brother a moron,” my mother said.

But I was a moron. How could I let this happen? Only my being a moron explained the situation.

Monday arrived all too soon. I gathered with my friends in the Commons Area of our highschool, the hub connecting all the classroom corridors. Starting the new school year had everyone energized. I was excited about art class. 

The bell rang. We elected to meet right here after third period and go to lunch somewhere.

I went to math during first period. Second period– art. I was in heaven in that class, I’d found my calling in life. 

The third period bell rang differently. It tolled for me. Doc’s class. There was so much I still wanted to do in life. It couldn’t end like this. Trudging down the hallway to my doom, I noticed other kids with a similar trudge. We were like zombies! I spotted Doc, standing outside his classroom door at the end of the hall, welcoming each student by shaking their hand.  

“Hi. How ya doin’?” he asked with a smile as I reached the doorway. He was short for a teacher, and quite rotund, his slacks tugged high above his waistline. Everything about this moment reinforced the coming of the End Times.

“Just take a seat anywhere,” he said, still smiling. 

As I entered the room I found a couple dozen faces staring forlornly at the door, and I knew I’d entered the land of the lost. I should turn and get out now, while I could. Instead, I found an empty desk near the wall, about half way back. 

I noticed the chalkboards across three walls of the room, filled with scribbling from top to bottom, side to side. 

“Eh, my name is Doc Sample,” Doc said as he closed the door. “But you can jes call me Doc.” He’s still smiling– what’s up with that? He was the cheeriest little man I ever saw. His accent was hick, even for West Texas.

“Eh, if you look at da chalkboards around da room,” Doc said, “you gonna see a heap of writin’.”

I glanced at the boards once again. On one was an acronym–SWAADCO.

S– very short sentences, close together are set off with commas.

W– words, phrases, and clauses in a series are set off with commas.

 “Dese here are Doc’s Grammah Rules,” the snow-capped, pudgy little man said. “Dis gonna be your entire exam at da end of da semester, everything you see on deez here boards. You memorize deez here rules and you and Ole Doc gonna get along just fine. Just fine.”

And so it begins, I thought. I have to memorize all of this?

“Now, I don’t want you to memorize all deez rules just to make good Ole Doc feel good. You gonna remember deez rules for the next ninety-nine years. After dat–” he chuckled, “–it won’t matter much.”

He’s crazy. A certifiable nut job.

“I want all of you to take out some paper and start copying down deez here rules. Come Friday, we gonna have ourselves a little test on dem. Gonna see how wise you guys are.”

I looked at the boards again. Doc’s Comma Rules. Doc’s Grammar Rules. If Doc is such a whiz at English, how come his conversational English is so– back woods? Copying the three blackboards took the rest of the hour.

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 “So,” my girlfriend asked during lunch at Taco Bell, “How’d it go?”

“The guy’s a lunatic.” I growled. 

“Bet you wish you’d signed up for English first,” Chuck said.

“I just wish Doc would pull his pants down below his armpits.”

“Is he as tough as they say he is?” Chuck’s girlfriend asked.

I pulled out Doc’s rules. “I have to memorize all this… by Friday.”

Everyone stared, dumbfounded.

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Tuesday came, as did the second day of Doc Sample’s English Class. As we took our seats, Doc scooped up a box from his desk and started down each row. From inside the box he handed every student a current copy of the Reader’s Digest. “Here you go,” he said as he handed a magazine to me, still smiling. 

This magazine is fine entertainment, but when do we get our text books? Maybe there was a story in there he wanted us read? Perhaps he wanted us to memorize the whole darn thing.

“Dis gonna be your text book in Doc’s class,” Doc Sample said. 

What? Doesn’t the Texas Schoolbook Whatever regulate and issue textbooks? Do I have to put a book cover on this?

“You’re going to learn to diagram every single word in dis here book over the next month. When you get through, I’ll have the next edition waiting for you.”

One young woman raised her hand. “Mr. Sample,” she said.

“Doc. Call me Doc. What’s on your mind?” 

“We’re going to diagram this whole book? In one month? There’s over a hundred pages here.”

“Well,” Doc chuckled, “ I guess we better get started.”

A collective groan filled the room.

“Using Ole Doc’s grammar rules you’re gonna diagram every word.” Doc moved to the blackboard, still covered in his handwriting. 

“How long you gonna remember Doc’s Grammar Rules?” Doc asked, still smiling, as he was about to apply chalk to board.

“Ninety-nine years,” someone moaned.

“Dat right. Ninety-nine years.” Doc wrote a sentence on the board.

“Under each subject noun in each sentence you gonna draw one underline, like dis.” As he drew on the board, Doc’s wide girth made his arms appear disproportionately short.

“Under each verb, two lines.”

Doc was in his element. How many times had he been here with each new class? Six classes a day for untold years. 

Doc went on to explain how he wanted the sentence diagramming illustrated. We did five or six pages in class, and then he assigned us the first ten pages of the first story in the Reader’s Digest for homework.

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Wednesday morning, I headed toward Doc’s class, grumbling. I’d spent a whole hour the previous evening diagramming the assigned pages. If I’d known it was going to be that tedious, I would’ve started well before nine-thirty.

Doc stood outside his classroom, a small crowd around him. I peeked over someone’s shoulder. Doc was grading everyone’s work, right there in the doorway, before allowing passage inside. 

“Betcha didn’t know Ole Doc’s a speed reader, did you?” he said, marking in someone’s book. The girl in front of me handed him her book and he breezed through the first four or five pages. The next five pages remained blank.

“What happened?” Doc asked, looking hurt. “You didn’t finish your assignment?” It was the first time Doc didn’t smile.

“I ran out of time. I tried to finish it in homeroom this morning, but I had other homework also.”

Doc grinned, handed her back her book, and pointed to a small group of students standing on the far side of the hallway, opposite the classroom.

“Okay, go stand over dere wit dose boys and girls.”

He turned to me, smiling once again. “Hi, how you doin?” he asked, holding out his stubby hand. “Darrel, isn’t it?”

I nodded as I passed him my homework. 

Coasting from page to page, marking my mistakes, he took about twenty seconds to grade all ten pages.

“Okay, you a good kid.” He stepped from the doorway and allowed me entrance, patting my shoulder as I strode past.

 After Doc graded everyone’s assignment and weeded out those who didn’t finish the work, he entered the classroom. 

  “Eh… we got us a few bad ole boys and girls who didn’t do their homework. If you want to stay on Doc’s good side, all you gotta do is finish your homework.” He shrugged his shoulders, which made his trouser cuffs rise high. ‘That’s all there is. Just do what I ask.”

He motioned to the students still outside the classroom. “Okay, you can come in now.”

I mused, watching Doc parade his wayward students in front of the class, only to torment them further. 

“Take a good look at these here lazy boys and girls who couldn’t find time to do Doc’s assignment.” 

“But I got faith in you,” he said as they shuffled past. “I’ll bet you’ll do better tomorrow. Won’t you?” 

“Yes sir,” they said.

“Just call me Doc.” He answered, matter-of-factly.

And Doc was right. The next day, no one failed to complete the assignment.

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One day during the second week of school, Doc led the entire class to the school library. As thirty of us crowded into a back room meant for a dozen, the librarian wheeled out a cart burdened with books, from some dark closet.

“These here are Doc’s collection of novels,” he said. “I traveled the entire country locating these here books. No one can check these books out ‘cept Ole Doc.”

He looked at me as if sizing me up, rummaged through the cart, picked out a book, and handed it to me. “Here you go. Dis got your name written all over it.”

FEVER IN THE EARTH, by William A. Owens, the cover read.

Doc proceeded to pick out a book for each student, and then led us back to our prison cell.

“I want you to read any book you like, long as you read da one I just gave you. Take as long as you need, as long as you finish it in da next six weeks. Then you gonna write a book report for Ole Doc.” 

I’d written quite a few book reports in my lifetime, his announcement didn’t rate a raised brow. 

“I want you write no more than five pages telling what the book is about.”

A five-page book report? Piece of cake.

Doc picked up a stick of chalk and scribbled a ‘five’ on the board. Followed by a ‘ten’.

 “No less than ten pages describing a picture of da times.”

Ten pages?

Doc scribbled another two-digit number.

 “Fifteen to twenty pages describing the Antagonist.

The chalk squeaked out another integer. “Ten to fifteen pages describing da protagonist.”

When Doc finished his laundry list of requirements someone raised their hand.

Doc, that’s over fifty pages.”

Doc seemed to consider the comment for a second. “Yeah. Dat about right. Minimum of fifty. More like Seventy-five. Somewhere around there. Take as long as you like. Jes finish your book report in da next six weeks. Then we’ll start da next one”.

I was furious with this little Cajun Napolean. There had to be a law somewhere governing the maximum legal length for a high school book report.

––––––––––––

“I hate that sawed-off cockroach!” I grumbled between bites of a beef burrito at Taco Bell.

“He’s crazy,” my girlfriend said. Everyone concurred.

I couldn’t drop English, I’d have to take summer school. I was in a bad place. 

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A week later, Doc made his way around the room with another cardboard box, handing out another book, a paperback– Moby Dick. What was he going to do– have us memorize it–  diagram it, cover-to-cover?

“We gonna read this book in class,” Doc said. “Gonna see what ole Herman Melville was up to when he wrote dis here book.”

We opened our books, and Doc appointed someone to read.

“Call me Ishmael,” the student began in a deadpan voice.

“Ehhhhhh- dat not what dat says,” Doc interrupted. 

Of course that’s what that says, I thought, unless you’re reading from a different book. That’s exactly what it says.

“What do you think Ole Herman was thinking when he wrote dat line?” A short discussion ensued as we delved into the topic.

“He’s establishing a rapport with the reader?” someone asked.

“Go on,” Doc prompted.

“It’s sort of like when you meet someone and you want to have more than a formal conversation,” someone else said. “So you say something like, ‘You can call me John,’ instead of, ‘My name is Smith’.”

“You’re giving someone permission to consider you as a friend,” another student added. 

“Dat right. Now try it again,” Doc said to the person reading. 

“Call me Ishmael,” the student began again, this time with emphasis. We each took turns reading a passage from Moby Dick, each reading with the passion we imagined the author intended. The story came alive, and I couldn’t wait for tomorrow’s reading. 

Wait a minute– I can’t be liking this! I hated Doc. I hated this class. I couldn’t enjoy reading this stupid book.

Perhaps I could enjoy the book. That didn’t mean I had to start liking Doc. No way were we ever going to be friends.

––––––––––––

One evening I hunkered down in the living room with my family, engrossed in a television movie, instead of doing the homework waiting for me. I bargained with my conscience, believing I could do my allotment of Reader’s Digest pages the next morning before my first class, which I’d done several times before.

The next morning, as I sat down in Homeroom, popped the cap off my Bic pen, and opened my Readers Digest, a surprise P.A. announcement beckoned everyone to the school auditorium for an unscheduled assembly. I didn’t want to go, but my homeroom teacher ushered everyone into the hall. “Leave your books,” he demanded as I tried to take my homework with me. 

Regretfully, I didn’t get my pages completed. I struggled between the next two class periods to accomplish as much as possible. My pen moved over the pages at light speed, underlining direct objects, wavy line under verbs, circling adjectives, bracketing predicate nominatives.

I only had four pages to go when the third period bell rang. I recognized that I’d led myself down a path of failure. It wasn’t my fault. Doc would understand. 

Doc stood in the hallway, grading other students homework as I approached. “Hi, how you doin’?” he asked, smiling. I handed him my book. I already knew the taunting I was in for, but when Doc reached the blank pages he looked up at me with great disappointment. 

“I thought you were one of my good kids?” 

He motioned with his stubby, age-spotted hand, “You better go stand over there, widda rest of dose bad ole boys and girls.” The small crowd of students by the opposite wall said I wasn’t the only one caught off guard by this morning’s assembly. But I felt the hurt I caused Doc. That was the first and last time I failed to get my homework pages done. 

After some procrastination I finally began my book report. Fever In The Earth was a story about the oil field days in Brownsfield, Texas. How derricks were hastily constructed with their platforms abutting, like floor tiles, and how one ambitious man came to the oilfields with nothing, built an empire, and then lost it. 

By watching for words and phrases describing the hero and the antagonists, or where and when the story was set, or where good and evil conflicted, the book turned out to be quite interesting.

One of Doc’s passions was Teaberry gum, and when the day came to hand in our book reports, some students took his desire to heart. They taped sticks of gum to extra pages in their reports. One person spelled out, ‘I deserve an A’ with the gum, wrapped in red. Doc couldn’t be bought, but it was a sincere sign of acceptance and respect. Doc received more gum than he could ever chew, and his homeroom sold the excess during school drives, one of the reasons his homeroom always won.

My book report tipped the scales at 67 pages. I never padded any of my reports with gum, I wanted Doc to respect my efforts on their own merit.

My next book report consumed 37 sheets of double-sided notebook paper, for a whopping 74 pages. The Mothers, by Vardis Fisher, told the harrowing tale of how a covered wagon train, known as the Donner Party departed for California too late in August and became trapped in the snow-laden mountains during most of the winter. It described in detail the great lengths each mother willed herself to ensure the survival of her family above all else. 

Genesee Fever, by Carl Carmer, was my next book report, and on it went. 

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I don’t know when it happened, when I went from ‘hating’ to ‘not hating’ Doc Sample. I wasn’t ready to admit my fondness for his antics, but my constant complaining during every lunch period morphed into whimsical stories. I didn’t realize the change until my best friend brought it to my attention one day as we sat at Stanley’s Drive-In. 

I was telling the tale of how Doc handed back papers he graded for an assignment. Someone had used a comma after the word ‘but’, and Doc brought it to everyone’s attention, saying, “Ehhh- you got your ‘but’ in da wrong place.” 

After my friend and I laughed about it, he remarked, “I remember when you first landed in Doc’s class. You hated that guy.” 

“I did, didn’t I,” I marveled upon reflection. 

“Now you think he’s pretty cool, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I suppose I do.” I found it hard to believe that I ever hated Doc.

I didn’t have to take summer school. I didn’t fail English. I finished the year with a B in English. 

When it came time the following August to sign up for my Senior classes, Doc was first on my list. Of the four of us who had met for lunch every day after fourth period for two semesters, my best friend Chuck and his girlfriend also signed up for Doc’s Senior English class. Doc was thrilled that I had recruited my friends. My pervious girlfriend and I had since broken up, so she re-enlisted with Ms. Worthen.

By coincidence that year, Chuck was reassigned to Mrs. Worthen for homeroom. When he didn’t show up in any of her English classes she surely deduced he’d voluntarily gone over to Doc’s side. I’ll wager that was as common an occurrence as those students who came running and screaming to her class after their first semester with Doc. The ones who gave up on themselves. I often wondered if she was exaulted to collect his exiles, or woeful to receive all the quitters and crybabies, the ones looking to just get by.

One morning as Chuck sat and finished diagraming his assigned Readers Digest pages during homeroom, Mrs. Worthen walked past, peeking over his shoulder. She volunteered how shameful it was that Doc didn’t use the proper English textbook, as prescribed by the Amarillo ISD. She didn’t understand why the school board allowed him to get away with such indignities. Then she asked what all those marks represented, scrawled beneath each word of every page of the Readers Digest. Chuck explained a few sentences, and then Mrs. Worthen remarked, “But… but that’s college level English, that’s not required coursework for high school students.”

“I know,” he said.