Typecasting ... and the woman who knew me best

Ms. Margie Grant was an enigma and an anathema to generations of students at Avery High School in Northeast Texas. Her college-level lesson plans and the in-class chores and homework assignments elicited more cuss words from many students than a practical joke from a friend involving Ben-Gay and a jock strap.

It was only after high school, when college English classes seemed startlingly simple that ex-students elevated her to Education Goddess status.

With a uncommon combination of common sense, dedication to her chosen field, and education, she could have taught at any college in Texas, but marriage to a man with a business in the community of English (yes, English), kept her tied to teaching English to less than 100 students a day in ninth to twelfth grades.

Despite her marital status, she was singularly known as Mizgrant . . . a single word that spoke volumes about the woman.

In Mizgrant’s classes you learned English whether or not you were so inclined.  She demanded obedience in learning all things English (the subject matter, not the town). Grammar was her passion, as was diagramming sentences, punctuation, and literature of all ilks. While other school-age ruralites in Annona, Detroit, Powderly, and Dimple were reading one step above “The Little Engine that Could,” Mizgrant’s students were plowing through Twain’s “A Tramp Abroad” or Osa Johnson's "I Married Adventure."

It was not unusual for a Mizgrant class to spend time on Monday going over the word picture intricacies in Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” switch to a discussion of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” on Tuesday and then spend the last three days of the week on the stacked-high examples of symbolism in “Lord of the Flies” or the fiction-can-become-reality aspects of “Animal Farm.”

In addition to teaching freshman-to-senior English classes, she also directed any activities associated with word arts in the state’s Interscholastic League competition, i.e., one-act play, debate, extemporaneous speech, and poetry reading. Her one-act play direction never failed to win the district competition, but, honestly, the other actors didn’t stand a chance. A rendition of “Aaron Slick from Punkin Creek” by competing schools paled in comparison to Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”

She didn’t just direct the action and dialogue of the selected pieces like any normal drama teachger; we learned the history of the play, why it was written, why she had selected it, and what life-lessons we could learn from being a part of the production.

For “The Devil and Daniel Webster, she told us it was originally a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet.

Fine. Good. Let’s get to this acting business, shall we?

That wasn’t enough for Mizgrant. The play was the retelling of a classic German tale, on which the the short story “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving was based.

Okay, we got it and we’re officially bored to the point of contemplating suicide.

The casting of the play, Mizgrant told the assembled would-be thespians, was strict typecasting: She smiled as she announced I was to play the devil.

I didn’t look much like a devil in the eleventh grade; to obtain that look took years of hard work and an ex-wife who sucked the blood clean out of me.

“I don’t look like the devil,” I whined to Mizgrant.

“You’ll do fine,” she assured me. “The part is all about attitude and demeanor; you have the attitude down already and you can be demeaner than anyone in school.”

Oh, yeah, forgot. She was fond of springing really awful puns without warning.

After six weeks of rehearsals – in which I had to learn how to hit a couple of notes on a borrowed fiddle -- and with a new, shiny black suit, a red vest, hair longer than the usual flattop with fenders, which I slicked back with Butch Wax, plus hours spent trying to figure out how to loosen my vocal chords to lower my voice -- Mizgrant transformed me into not just “a” devil, but “the” devil.

            It did not escape my attention – nor that of my parents – that in three successive years I had been chosen to play the part of Bottom in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” (a character who flits between the human world and a fantasyland of the fairy underworld); Petruchio in “Taming of the Shrew” (a fortune-hunting scoundrel who is a bit of an idiot), and the devil.

            No doubt about it: Typecasting.

            After winning the district’s best actor award three years in a row, I elected not to be in Mizgrant’s play my senior year. Rather, she elected me not to be in it. The tryouts were held and I was given the lead. However, the part – don't remember what it was or the name of the play – called for the character to have long hair. Deal breaker, that. My flattop with perfect fenders hairdo was a masterpiece and long hair was not in my immediate plans.

            “She won’t cut me. Not me. Not after I handed that woman three best actor awards and my performances won three straight district titles. No way. No how.”

Way. How.

When I showed up for practice the following Monday – with a flattop and fenders greased back to perfection – she announced that another boy had assumed the lead role.

“You cut me?” I asked in astonishment.

“Not literally, figuratively,” she said, smiling.

I hate it when she talks like that. Next thing you know, she’ll have me diagramming that damn sentence!