a story about following the truth in your heart His name was Daniel Nast and he was the junior high school music teacher in a small mill town along the Columbia River. When he confronted a room full of country kids with tin ears, his face became rock hard and the blood pounded in his temples. The day I was the recipient of his anger, I was looking out the window and day dreaming of the time I could leave the place where a band saw defined the way people lived and died. "Answer the question, Joann." "Question?," I bleated. "Beethoven spent his entire life trying to write a really good one." His pale blue eyes impaled me to the seat of the wooden desk. "A really good what?" I stared hard at him. I was hoping that the answer would appear magically on his forehead like the black "8 Ball" globe that my girlfriend owned. You shook it hard and the answer floated up in white letters to the window. What was he talking about? "Sonata?" "Sonata," he echoed as if I'd just answered that Beethoven dug rock and roll. "You imbecile." The vein in his forehead throbbed with a fresh supply of blood to fuel his anger. "Let me ask you something, Joann." His voice dripped with disgust. "Would you do something just for the sheer love of it?" The room full of seventh graders settled down in anticipation. It was the fearful silence before an earthquake or some other natural disaster. "Now, don't misunderstand." His voice closed the distance between us. "I'm not talking about job security. Would you do something because you wouldn't be happy doing anything else?" A big question for an imbecilic brain. But I gave it full consideration. I ignored the smug faces of my classmates and thought hard on the question. "I would," I replied. Satisfied that I had answered truthfully. "Would what?" The pulsating vein on his temple looked as if it would burst any moment. "Work at something for the...sheer love of it." When my answer penetrated, his face turned to granite. Why, this man hates. I'd never seen it at such close range before. It made me slightly sick. "Liar." The music room fell dead silent. Even the laughter of the kids playing on the black asphalt basketball court outside the pull open windows, stopped. I froze. I couldn't believe my ears. Why was he calling me a liar? Working with words gave me pleasure and the reward was the act itself. I played with words like children played with blocks. I stacked one on top of the other, arranged them in patterns, made castles and fortresses out of them. I even put them in people's mouths in the plays that I made up for my family's entertainment. I had nothing to gain from this interest. My mom often pointed out that if I picked up a dust cloth as often as I picked up a pen, I'd be able to see my reflection in the dining room table. A thousand years passed before Daniel Nast mercifully let me go. He turned his back on me and walked over to the piano. He sat down and depressed the sticking F-Sharp. No sound. He depressed it again before doubling up his hand into a fist and striking it hard. "If I'm not given a decent piano," he said through clenched teeth. I'll quit. I swear to God I will." He then began to play something. A Beethoven sonata no doubt. "The answer is fugue, Joann." His voice came from somewhere deep inside of him. I believe I was the only who heard him. He stopped playing and sat with his back to the class. And then a strange thing happened. Mr. Nast's shoulders began to shake. Barely perceptible at first and then violently as if he were having a seizure. Was he laughing at me? I couldn't take any more humiliation. I looked toward the door and considered making a run for it. I started to rise from my seat before I realized that he was not laughing. He was crying. Shoulders hunched over the keyboard, head bowed over middle C , stifled sobs racked his entire body. Mr. Nast was weeping as if his heart would break. I turned my face toward the window. The boys were dribbling basketballs and the girls were waiting patiently for their turn at free throws. The sharp ring of the bell brought me back into the room. We kids looked at one another with question mark faces. No one wanted to be the first to break the unhealthy spell he had cast over us. He had us imprisoned in a world we couldn't understand but were powerless to vacate. "That will be all for today," he said. "I'm finished with you." The invisible straps that held us down to our desk had been taken away. We slid out from behind our desks and ran into the hall. Mr. Nast had to be replaced at the end of the school year. "Nervous breakdown" was whispered around school. He was too temperamental the parents said. High strung. Not cut out for a room full of seventh graders. It would take twenty years of writing, and thousands of hours of juggling job and family to carve out time to write. Enough rejection slips to wallpaper a barn, not to mention perseverance that would make a worker bee envious. But I kept writing. And with each new birthday, I redefined my priorities. And being able to write was up there somewhere between breathing and eating. Two decades of putting one word after another had to pass before I could fully appreciate what happened in that music room. Now as I sit down at my computer to begin another play or short story, I think of that music teacher in the little school along the Columbia River a lifetime ago. Liar, Mr. Nast? How dare you.
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