My Latin love affair
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

BY ANDREW LEONARD
Culture shock nearly killed me the first time I heard Mrs. Hodges call roll. It happened during my first-period class on my first day of high school in Gainesville, Fla. I was a newly transplanted kid from New York City, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the rest of my classmates were saying. Mrs. Hodges would call out a name, and a student would respond with the familiar word "here," followed by an unintelligible utterance about six syllables long that I became convinced must be the original Latin for the gladiatorial salute "Hail Caesar, we who are about to die salute you."

It wasn't until Mrs. Hodges had made it halfway through the roll-call that I realized my classmates were saying "here, ma'am." Up until that point, I'm sure I had never actually heard "ma'am" used non-ironically, and certainly not directed at, of all people, a teacher.

But Mrs. Hodges was without question a "ma'am" -- as many of her Latin I students, who had already taken classes from her at middle school, well knew. Pear-shaped, white-haired, bad teeth and all, Mrs. Hodges was the epitome of a graceful Southern lady -- the kind of woman who could teach her students the Latin roots of the word "antebellum" with the fond familiarity of someone who had just returned from a pre-Civil War debutante ball.

But what made Mrs. Hodges special was neither her grace nor her Southern gentility -- (imagine Caesar's Commentaries as read by Scarlett O'Hara) but her unmitigated competitive fire. Mrs. Hodges liked to win.

Latin students at my high school were strongly encouraged to join the Junior Classical League, a national organization of high school classics students. JCL members regularly meet at district, state and national conventions (forums) -- and compete. We would give orations and declamations, take written tests on Roman and Greek history and mythology, Latin derivatives and grammar, and even act in comic skits. (I wrote one such skit myself: "The Wizard of Disco, or Jonathon Revoltus and the search for the Saturday Night Forum" -- I played the part of Orpheus, the Wandering DJ, complete with green satin pants and an electric lyre).

Two weeks prior to a district or state forum, Mrs. Hodges would cease actually teaching Latin, and class time would be devoted entirely to preparation in our chosen fields of competition. In retrospect, of course, it was a splendid pedagogical motivator, but at the time, the educational benefits seemed clearly secondary. Victory was the issue. It was never vulgarly explicit; Mrs. Hodges would never stoop so low. Indeed, the more I think about it, the harder it is to remember exactly how she instilled such fire in us -- perhaps it was all subliminal, a reflection of all the hours we spent reading about war and conquest -- Caesar, Aeneas, etc. Whatever the case, it was crystal clear to all of us that Mrs. Hodges wanted the state championship like Caesar wanted Gaul, like Alexander wanted the world. We obliged her.

On those all-too-rare occasions when one of her students would somehow manage to stumble correctly through a translation read aloud in class, Mrs. Hodges would smile gently and bestow upon us her highest act of praise -- a quote from John Keats: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." She would never be so uncouth as to invoke Keats when one of us snatched a first or second prize at a state forum, but we knew what she was thinking -- she radiated that same proud smile, and that same dignified twinkle glittered in her eye.

Thank you, Mrs. Hodges, for teaching me that I could be a scholar and a gentleman -- and still play to win. A thing of beauty is a joy forever, indeed.
SALON | Feb. 12, 1999

More teachers we loved:
+ Remembrance of things present By Carol Lloyd
+ Greek love By Hank Hyena
+ The vocabulary of wonder By Scott Rosenberg
+ Teaching by daydream By Chris Colin
+ Radical redhead Miss Smith By Jenn Shreve
+ One valentine too late By Karen Templer
+ The warlock of grammar By Fiona Morgan

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