Demon's Door Read Free Page B

boy.
    â€˜I’ll tell you how it relates to you. You all came to this class because you have difficulty in communicating. You find it difficult to express your feelings to other people. And there are two reasons for this.
    â€˜The first reason is that you didn’t pay enough attention when your grade-school teachers were showing you how to read and write. You always thought you knew better, and that reading and writing were a waste of your valuable time.
    â€˜The second reason is that you never try to put yourself into other people’s shoes.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t want to put myself in Mikey’s shoes,’ said a ginger-haired boy at the back of the class. ‘They totally stink !’
    Jim ignored him, and stood up. ‘You want to know the secret of being a great communicator? Like Ronald Reagan, maybe, or Barack Obama? The secret of being a great communicator is to know what other people want to hear, and what they need to hear, too. I told you that I ran over my cat. And what did you say?’
    He approached the sallow-faced boy’s desk and stood right in front of him. The boy leaned back, looking uncomfortable.
    â€˜â€œAre we supposed to feel sad?”’ Jim mimicked him. ‘That’s what you said. So tell me. Did you seriously think that saying that to me was going to make me like you, or make me think what a chilled-out, together kind of guy you are? Because all it told me about you is that you’re a thoughtless, insensitive, self-centered idiot.’
    â€˜Hey,’ said the sallow-faced boy, in a voice that was obviously much more shrill than he had meant it to be. ‘Who are you calling an idiot?’
    â€˜I don’t know. What’s your name, idiot?’
    â€˜Leon. Leon Shulman. And if you think I’m an idiot, at least I wasn’t stupid enough to run over my own cat and expect everybody to feel sorry for me.’
    Jim said, ‘You’re missing the point, Leon. I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me. I simply expect you to show some sensitivity, you know? So that I think – hey, this Leon Shulman is a nice, considerate, respectful young man. In return, I’ll pay him extra attention in class, and when it comes to marking his papers, I’ll be more inclined to mark him up than down .
    â€˜ That’s communication, you idiot. And that’s what I’ve come here to teach you. But, like I said, only if you want me to. If you don’t, you can carry on playing basketball and polishing your nails and dancing and fighting and listening to “Chase Da Cat”, and I’ll just sit here and read my book and go home when the bell rings. It’s entirely up to you.’
    â€˜How did you know that?’ asked the boy with the boom box, suspiciously.
    â€˜How did I know what?’
    â€˜How do you know that I was playing “Chase Da Cat?”’
    Jim closed his eyes for a moment, so that he looked even more exhausted than he actually was. Then he opened them again, and said, with monumental patience, ‘Tell me your name.’
    â€˜Neville Brown. But most people call me Top Dime. Or T.D. for short.’
    â€˜Well, T.D., let me tell you this. I’ve been teaching Special Class Two for longer than I want to remember. Students who have difficulty with the English language try to find other ways to tell people how they feel. Sometimes they do it through aggressive behavior. They carry knives, or guns. Sometimes they do it through the way they dress. Sometimes they clam up and say nothing at all. A lot of the time, they express themselves through the music they play, the way you do. And if I didn’t know every hip-hop artist and every gangsta rap track that there ever was, then I wouldn’t be much of a teacher, would I, because I wouldn’t know what my students were trying to say to me.’
    He paused, and then he said, ‘Kind of ironic, wasn’t it, that you were