Zane Grey and I

In preparation for leaving our apartment on Amelia Island, we are starting to think about how we will get rid of everything here.  We already have our home in the retirement community in Fort Myers furnished, so there is very limited room for items from this apartment to be moved there.  One of the boxes here contains quite a collection of Zane Gray books which Bill acquired.  Some of these appear to be First Editions, so they might be valuable, and we don’t want to just put them in a dumpster.  Yesterday, we sorted through them and made a list with publishing company and copyright dates.  This exercise brought a memory back.

As a high school student, I was very diligent.  I did not take the easy way out when completing assignments.  So, when it came time to pick a book for a book report, I opted for weighty material.  I don’t remember what all I waded through, but I do remember Walden Pond was one of the mental challenges I tackled.  I had the same English teacher for both my Junior and Senior years.  He and I engaged regularly in mental jousting.  He delighted in baiting me by bringing up topics he knew we would disagree on.  He referred to me as his “worthy adversary.”

However, as I thought about the final book report for my high school career, I decided it was time to give myself a break.  I got a Zane Grey novel…I think maybe it was Riders of the Purple Sage…and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I knew my English teacher would be shocked, and I thoroughly enjoyed that too.

When I got the book report back, I had a 95…that was actually the highest grade he would give.  He claimed no one ever deserved 100, because there was no such thing as a perfect paper.  I had to laugh though when I saw what he had done.  He had circled my name in red.  He had circled Zane Grey in red.  He had drawn a line between the circles, and on the line, he had written “incongruity."

If he thought that was an incongruity, he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did!