He Blinded Me with Science

an elegy for my beloved high school chemistry teacher

Photo by Alex Kondratiev on Unsplash

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My high school chemistry teacher recently died. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in at least 35 years. But he’s vivid in my mind today.

I was a critically ill child. Due to my hydrocephalus, I had two brain surgeries before I was two years old and spent the first seven years of my life in and out of hospitals. Like many seriously ill kids, I dreamed of becoming a pediatrician. I think those dreams were sick-kid-mythology. Our doctors and nurses become our Gods and we want to join their pantheon.

One of the primary reasons why I transferred from our reservation school to a white farm town high school is because of that mythology. I still lived on the rez with my family and commuted to the farm town. It was a desperate and difficult commute. But the reservation school didn’t have any advanced science classes and that farm town school somehow had a chemistry teacher with a PhD.

That farm town and my chemistry teacher prepared me for the science classes that I’d eventually have to take as a pre-med university student. So, in high school, I took chemistry, advanced chemistry, physics, advanced physics, and inorganic chemistry.

Yeah, I entered college as a chemistry and math double major before poetry got in the way.

But, to honor my high school chemistry teacher, I need to tell you of an event that happened outside of the classroom.

My father was a binge-drinking and nomadic alcoholic. He’d leave our house for days and weeks at a time to drink with his family and friends in the Indian bars of Spokane, Washington, and on his tribe’s reservation in Idaho. My father was a Coeur d’Alene Indian. My mother was Spokane Indian so that makes me Spokane.

Sherman Alexie, Sr.

My father was a diabetic so there was always a chance that he’d drink himself to death. After he’d been gone for a week or two, we’d go searching for him.

During winter of my senior year, I found my father in one of the Indian bars in Spokane. Indian bars aren’t owned by Indians. They’re white-owned bars where Indians monopolize the place as customers.

I parked in front of that bar and walked inside. I was bigger than my father so it was easy to pull him out onto the sidewalk. And he argued with me. He didn’t want to go home. He kept saying that his cousins, Hookum and Happy, were waiting for him somewhere. My father was gentle when sober and gentle when drunk so his protests were also gentle.

The night was below freezing and my father wasn’t wearing a coat. He wouldn’t get in my car so I opened my trunk, pulled out a blanket, and wrapped it around his shoulders.

I continued to negotiate with him about getting him home. He wanted to buy beer for the road but I wasn’t legally old enough and he was too drunk to even walk into a store.

Then my high school chemistry teacher and his wife were appeared on the sidewalk near us. He was in a tuxedo. She was in an evening gown. They’d just come from a musical performance.

“Sherman,” my teacher said. He was surprised and delighted to see me. He introduced me to his wife and told me something about the show they’d just seen. I think classical musicians had played some piece of chamber music.

Then my teacher and his wife turned their attention to my father. The social contract meant that I was supposed to make the proper introductions. But I was too nauseous with shame.

My father was a drunk fucking Indian wearing a fucking blanket for warmth in the fucking winter. It felt like he and I had time-traveled from a 19th Century Indian camp where the United States Cavalry was freezing and starving us to death.

I choked back tears as my chemistry teacher and his wife introduced themselves to my father.

My teacher told my father that I was one of the best students he’d ever had and that he must be proud of his son. My father drunkenly agreed.

My teacher told my father about the musical performance they’d just seen and my father drunkenly told them that he’d learned how to play piano in Catholic school but hadn’t played in years.

My teacher shook my father’s hand, shook my hand, and said his good night. Then he and his wife walked down the steet and around the corner. My father was silent. I think he was overcome with his own shame.

He was docile when I helped him into my car. And he was docile as I drove him home.

I’d spent five years in that farm town hiding my family’s poverty and dysfunction. I was the captain of the basketball team and prom royalty. I was president of The Future Farmers of America and the Drama Club. I was a member of the Honor Sociey who’d scored in the 97% percentile on the SAT. But I’d been wearing a mask the whole time. Behind that mask were the most painful parts of my life. I’d hidden them from even my closest friends.

But my mask had been torn from my face on that wintry Spokane street. I was exposed.

That next Monday morning, I barely made it to school. I stopped my car three or four times during my drive and almost turned back to the rez. I thought about never again returning to that farm town high school.

But I completed that arduous journey.

Standing at my school locker, I said my usual good mornings to all my white friends. Farm and ranch kids. Computer kids. Stoners. The jocks. Some of my friends simultaneously belonged to all of those cliques.

Then my chemistry teacher approached me.

He said, “Sherman, can we talk in private?”

“Yes,” I said.

We walked to his empty classroom. He and I were alone.

“Sherman,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about this weekend. If you need to talk, I’m here. But I just want you to know that my father was an alcoholic.”

The room started spinning. I thought I might faint. I was afraid and relieved. I felt accepted and alien.

My chemistry teacher’s empathy was so powerful that I ran out of the room.

He and I never talked about my father. Or his father. We continued on with our teacher/student relationship.

At graduation, he wished me well and gave me an envelope with a twenty dollar bill inside.

And then he and I left each other’s lives

It was my childhood friend, Steve, who informed me about my chemistry teacher’s death. And we both laughed to remember that he and I would sometimes sing Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science” when we were sitting in chemistry class. We never sang it directly to our teacher but we know that he heard.

Goodbye, my teacher, goodbye.

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