Mainely Middle
Journal of the Maine Association for Middle
Level Education
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2001/2002 |
The Learning Curve: One Man's TrashI spent my early years in the back alleys of Evanston, Illinois, where I was known for trash picking. It has profoundly influenced my theories of education. When I was finally old enough to traipse out the back gate, pulling my Radio Flyer wagon behind me, I found a world of treasure in trash. Poking through the boxes and garbage cans set out by the neighbors, I acquired the objects I considered the resources of adults. This had the effect of giving realism to play, boosting my imagination beyond the reach of mere toys. Trash offered real electronic appliances; interesting, exotically labeled crates and boxes; periodicals, books, hats, old glasses frames, badminton racquets, engine parts, and even (the Holy Grail) an occasional power tool. Scrounging everyday objects fired my imagination. Fantastical deeds were authenticated when accomplished with real objects. Marianne Moore would understand: poetry, she wrote, might just give us "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." A sturdy cardboard box was the stuff of which supersonic jet cockpits were made; a defunct power drill lived again as ray gun or Alien Mutant Ion Vaporizer. Yes, my little brother and I loved weapons, but more than senseless carnage and alien body count, it was "about" ingenuity… science… imitating desperate Fireball XL5 escapades from television, cartoons, and venturing beyond the known universe. We came in peace. It's not like we were immature kids. After all, I was in third grade. Magazines were highly prized, especially the ones Mom wouldn't buy for us: Spiderman comics and an occasional Mad magazine. Orange crates and garden pots were pleasing, good for recreating mail order supplies from Acme Corporation - so crucial to our Coyote vs. Roadrunner re-enactments. Even the mundane objects - lamps, extension cords, curtains, bath mats - added homey touches to the swing set tents used on expeditions to the Zambesi River or Missions to Mars or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. One could also become lost in space with a few fireplace screens, dryer vent hoses and galvanized buckets. We loved building Will Robinson's robot. We cracked up reciting, "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!" The all-time mother lode of trash picking appeared one summer morning: A plastic, aqua green Zenith FM radio, plug and cord intact. As big as a breadbox, it had gold knobs and chrome grill work just like Dad's Ford Falcon. We stashed it on the wagon and ran home to install it in the cockpit of our X-15 supersonic jet (a dishwasher box). We strapped on space helmets (cracked football helmets) and proceeded to break the sound barrier, broach the limits of the known universe, and fly recon sorties over enemy air bases. We added a steering wheel and rear view mirrors and had us a Stingray. This was the right stuff. Then we made the mistake of actually plugging it in. Static! It still worked! We added a wire clothes hanger. Music! We were shocked, shocked! And confronted with a problem. The radio came in the house. It was now too good to be left out in the yard. It was no longer trash. Its new place of honor was on my desk. Thus began my initiation to the radio spectrum. Turn the dial left: the Top 40 station our babysitter listened to while he did the twist. This was fun. To the right was the music my parents liked to listen to. Intolerable. In the middle was talky stuff… something to pass over quickly. I do remember a particular bit of talk… about some U.S. Navy ships hurrying toward an island called Cuba. Our spectacular find, for all of its authenticity and usefulness, had become limited: now it could only be a radio. What a waste of a perfectly good piece of junk. It's still hard for me to pass up a good pile of trash. Riding home with my art teacher colleague once, I spotted a cache of potentially great stuff on the curb. Someone had thrown away cardboard tubes, Styrofoam packing forms, books and flowerpots. What were they thinking! My eighth grade son tried to turn invisible in the back seat, ashamed that we were loading the tubes, rummaging through the books and flowerpots. We declined the Styrofoam containers, but those tubes were going to make a great marble chute or telescope or power generator for a middle school intergalactic transporter. In one of his poems, Richard Wilbur says, "the world's fullness is not made but found." Howard Nemerov wrote: "The world is full of mostly invisible things," which leads me to feel that the invisible things to be found by us comprise most of what there is to be found. So "the world" has more to do with how we think than with what we see. I propose what any poet or trashpicker worth his Flexible Flyer mileage knows: that the improvisational skills of childhood are crucial to a fulfilling adulthood in the world. We ought to be careful what we throw away. Trash is the outcome of a failed imagination. In other words, be alert to what you have but don't make use of, lack of imagination being the only truly wasted resource. And it is awfully good to broach the boundaries of the known universe, every once in a while. All you need is a cardboard box or a broken radio or even nothing at all but an adventurous thought. |