A Kick in the Seat of the Pants
Chapter 3 of The Family Business
“When I left her office, I felt like she’d gut-punched me, brushed me off, slapped me back and forth, gave me a cool compress to put on my cheeks, cold-cocked me with a stiff uppercut to the jaw, picked me up, brushed me off again, then kicked me in the seat of my pants as she handed me a piece of cake and showed me the door.”
— Christopher Paul Curtis (The Madman of Piney Woods)
I sat quietly at my desk. The others had left, abandoning me to my confessional.
Mr. Radler sat at his desk by the open window, writing in a large black notebook with a weathered leather cover, periodically pausing ever so slightly to contemplate some unknown difficulty in his reflections. Through the window drifted sounds of levity from outside, children playing, laughing, carried by the warm breeze that glided into the room and settled here and there with a puff or a rustle.
A small sigh yearned to escape me, and I quickly stifled it, pressing my lips together tightly.
I contemplated my hands, fingers knit together tightly in my lap, quietly hoping he had forgotten about me, not daring to make a sound in hopes that…
“Come, sit down over here,” he said, pointing to the empty wooden chair next to his desk.
I quickly transited the room and found myself sitting in front of him, not wanting to make eye contact.
“I’m looking at your math grades,” he started. “You’re not failing math, but you’re very close to it. Frankly, I’m surprised,” he continued, “because you could be at the top of the class in any of your subjects.”
I felt my face getting hot. I looked at him and nodded.
“You seem to have trouble completing your homework… I don’t think it’s because you can’t do it. I think you have other things that get in your way.”
I did have a bit of a problem with homework. Mostly, I didn’t do it. Any of it. Unless and until I absolutely had to.
I bit my lip and nodded.
“I know you have a great interest in science,” he continued. “If you want to excel in science, if you really want to be a scientist, you’re going to need to know your math. And to know your math, you’re going to have to do the work. It might seem tedious to you now, but there’s no way around it.”
“I know,” I said.
“I know that you know,” he said.
He looked back down at his notebook and started scribbling furiously. I tried to read as he wrote but could not steal a glance quickly enough to focus on the words. I looked past Mr. Radler’s desk to the corner where a well-worn and weathered cricket bat leaned up against the wall.
I quickly looked back down at my hands.
“Each day, I shall give you an extra problem or two. You will solve the problems and have the answers on my desk before class the next day. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
“You may go now,” he said.
I quietly stood and started silently navigating through the desks to the hallway doors.
“Oh, Martin,” he said as I was almost into the hallway, “one more thing…”
I stepped back into the room, unsuccessfully trying to keep my eyes from wandering to the corner to see if the bat was still in its place.
It was.
Radler was standing by his desk, and I could sense that he was trying to, unsuccessfully, stifle an emerging wicked grin, the resulting expression causing a slight twitching at the corner of his mouth.
“Your parents have graciously invited us to have dinner with them next Friday.” He paused slightly as if to enjoy my reaction. “Your father said you should ride with us instead of going home by train as usual.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and fled through the doorway as quickly as my legs would carry me.
Sometimes we all need “a kick in the seat of the pants.” For me, this was a wakeup call, a “jolt” to help me realize that there is some work which must be done for my own good, though often, if nothing else, to satisfy others’ need for order, so as not to cause discomfort or some other painful reaction, and not to disgrace myself.
I felt a sudden sense of relief as I realized I had been afforded the rare opportunity of a stern lecture in lieu of a physically and even more emotionally painful paddling. In the 1960s, corporal punishment was still an acceptable and greatly feared reward for misbehavior, nonconformance, or even wandering thoughts. But my relief turned to dread in a flash, and I realized that my father, a strong believer in “the stick before the carrot,” would soon hear of my inequities and would undoubtedly take his pleasure in administering his cruel method of correction as he frequently did when I didn’t measure up to his expectations.
With that in mind, I began rubbing the back of my trousers with a circular motion as I exited the building and descended the stairs, an outward signal to classmates that I had met my punishment and would live to daydream another day.
