Randy the Robot
Randarious, or Randy, is one of my favorite students. He isn’t the brightest of students—he finished the year with a C-average in English I. But no student provided me with more entertainment, both intentionally and unintentionally, than Randy.
Randy talks like a robot. He shoots his words out like a data processor. He wastes no breath, keeping his statements as concise as possible. Occasionally, when he gets excited about a writing assignment, he shoots his hand up vertically. “I read this?” he asks. When I give him the go-ahead (he never does anything without first asking permission), he accelerates his rate of speech, shooting out the words in a quicker yet still robotic fashion. The students have a hard time abstaining from laughter when he talks—so do I. But he never gets upset. He will just rationalize that, “Them kids are crazy,” and sit down with his scowling face.
Randy has a scowl on his face most of the time. He loves propriety, and the ridiculously inappropriate behavior he witnesses at Simmons High disgusts him. On one assigned essay he had to tell about a time when he did something better than he thought he would. He wrote about attending a dance, where he watched, “Them kids acting crazy” better than he anticipated.
“How did you watch them better?” I asked curiously.
“I didn’t blink.”
“You didn’t blink for the entire dance? How long were you there?”
“Fo hours. I just sit and watch them act all crazy.”
I often speculated what conditions it would take to produce a child like Randy. I often pictured Randy going home at night to an over-bearing, stringent father who would whoop him if he even thought about doing something out of line. One day I was proven wrong.
On parent-teacher night, a man walked through the door who looked like Randy. I was confused though, because he was smiling—Randy did not frequently smile in the beginning of the year. He introduced himself as Randy Sr., and as he spoke in a quiet, comforting tone free of harshness, I was amazed that this man produced a children as rigid and obedient as Randy.
“I try to get Randy to smile, to have fun, to go over to friends’ houses, but all he wants to do is play them video games.” I told him he was a perfectly behaved child and an average student who works hard. He shook my hand, and I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to have met the father of Randy.
There are a million other things I could write about Randy. But to close, I want to talk about one of Randy’s greatest passions: running. Randy talked about running endlessly. In keeping with his robotesque personality, he believed there was some secret to running fast. If he learned this program, he would be the fastest in the school.
“Mr. A-bear, I move my arms like this, I go faster, so fast I win the race.”
“Mr. A-bear, sir, I got this new bracelet, it make my blood faster, it make me unstoppable.”
Nearly every week Randy had a new secret. Later, when I coached him in track, I discovered what I suspected all along: the secrets did not amount to piss on snow. But anything that made Randy the Robot excited brought a joy to my heart. He was the best-behaved student I’ve ever seen, he had a character all of his own, and he entertained the class with his unique personality. I could not have asked for a more enjoyable student, and I hope all the first-years have a similar character in one of their classes.
Randy talks like a robot. He shoots his words out like a data processor. He wastes no breath, keeping his statements as concise as possible. Occasionally, when he gets excited about a writing assignment, he shoots his hand up vertically. “I read this?” he asks. When I give him the go-ahead (he never does anything without first asking permission), he accelerates his rate of speech, shooting out the words in a quicker yet still robotic fashion. The students have a hard time abstaining from laughter when he talks—so do I. But he never gets upset. He will just rationalize that, “Them kids are crazy,” and sit down with his scowling face.
Randy has a scowl on his face most of the time. He loves propriety, and the ridiculously inappropriate behavior he witnesses at Simmons High disgusts him. On one assigned essay he had to tell about a time when he did something better than he thought he would. He wrote about attending a dance, where he watched, “Them kids acting crazy” better than he anticipated.
“How did you watch them better?” I asked curiously.
“I didn’t blink.”
“You didn’t blink for the entire dance? How long were you there?”
“Fo hours. I just sit and watch them act all crazy.”
I often speculated what conditions it would take to produce a child like Randy. I often pictured Randy going home at night to an over-bearing, stringent father who would whoop him if he even thought about doing something out of line. One day I was proven wrong.
On parent-teacher night, a man walked through the door who looked like Randy. I was confused though, because he was smiling—Randy did not frequently smile in the beginning of the year. He introduced himself as Randy Sr., and as he spoke in a quiet, comforting tone free of harshness, I was amazed that this man produced a children as rigid and obedient as Randy.
“I try to get Randy to smile, to have fun, to go over to friends’ houses, but all he wants to do is play them video games.” I told him he was a perfectly behaved child and an average student who works hard. He shook my hand, and I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to have met the father of Randy.
There are a million other things I could write about Randy. But to close, I want to talk about one of Randy’s greatest passions: running. Randy talked about running endlessly. In keeping with his robotesque personality, he believed there was some secret to running fast. If he learned this program, he would be the fastest in the school.
“Mr. A-bear, I move my arms like this, I go faster, so fast I win the race.”
“Mr. A-bear, sir, I got this new bracelet, it make my blood faster, it make me unstoppable.”
Nearly every week Randy had a new secret. Later, when I coached him in track, I discovered what I suspected all along: the secrets did not amount to piss on snow. But anything that made Randy the Robot excited brought a joy to my heart. He was the best-behaved student I’ve ever seen, he had a character all of his own, and he entertained the class with his unique personality. I could not have asked for a more enjoyable student, and I hope all the first-years have a similar character in one of their classes.
posted by Joel Hebert at 2:31 PM
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