Volume 3, Entry 27: Quotation Marks Revisited
Returning to the most incendiary punctuation of the pandemic
In the post-AP Reading summer world, I have been methodically pushing through projects one after another. All-time stats are compiled for Mathletes, I wrapped up the manuscript for Sweet Appeal and it’s getting its final reads as we speak, the Math 3 Essential Skills Quiz video solutions are complete for semester one, and I even managed to achieve 100% on Cuphead a few days ago (but I’ll address that at a future time). Although I’ve set aside strict To Do List-ing for the season, I am pleased to report that I’ve checked off a bunch of tasks with just over a month of break remaining.
Still, after completing so many big tasks, I’ve arrived at a point where I can finally entertain attacking some down-list items from my To Do list from the last two years. In case that sentence doesn’t make sense, let me explain.
My To Do lists include three sections. The first is short term tasks consisting of things that are imminent. School stuff goes here—tests to prepare, recommendations to write, meetings to organize, etc.—as do the newsletter essays. I place this section at the top of my list so that I have to scroll past it constantly and thus be reminded of what I need to do.
The third section is a comprehensive list of my completed tasks. Anything that appears on the To Do list and gets finished I cut and paste down here. This part of the list becomes untenably large in only a few months—I maintain one list for each school year—but it provides a psychological counterpoint to the first section: where the first piles on the stress of incomplete work, the third reiterates that I am not just capable but prolific and have done so, so much already.
Those counting along, though, will surely notice I’ve skipped a section: the second. That’s because the second is one I rarely let myself look at because these are the tasks that endure week after week and year after year. These are the long term tasks, the things I’ve wanted to finish (or *gulp* actually start) for an extended interval but never gotten to. For the last two years wrapping up Sweet Appeal has resided there, glaring at me with its arms crossed in a stern rebuke, but other items stretch back further. “Create my own scorebook” has been present since my very first digital To Do list; other than a few sketches, I’ve never progressed toward it in the slightest. The “Cuddle Movie Wiki” has never gotten off the ground; the “Mathletes Season Summaries” are likewise barely more than a few paragraphs in a note from June 2021. “Write my own personal data form”, despite being something truly beneficial, is barely further than that.
It’s obvious why this is. I struggle to keep up with everything that actually is part of my job; that is, short-term projects with tight deadlines govern my life. Beyond those, I spend more time exercising and cooking now—those both soak up hours that, in the aggregate, could lend the time needed for some of these other items. How can I justify examining scorebooks and setting up intricate spreadsheet designs when there are three-dozen other imperatives staring at me from the top? The easy answer is: I can’t. Even when time presents itself, whether during the school year or while on a break, I default to getting ahead on something else. I am unable to extricate myself from defaulting priority to work.
But this is summer and I have completed (or nearly completed) a good number of important items from my first section. I can’t deny that I have, and there’s still enough of a buffer from the start of school that I can justify directing some attention toward section two. And I’ve known for weeks where I wanted to devote at least a few hours of that superfluous time because it’s an item that’s been on my list longer than the novel stuff has.
“Apology Letter to Will”
Readers who date back to fall 2020 and followed closely then might understand the origin of this but I’ll provide context now. Will is Will Leitch, a prolific writer best known for founding the sports website Deadspin. He wrote there for years and works as a sports journalist for multiple other outlets now, he’s published multiple non-fiction books, he works as a film critic of some acclaim—he’s half of the duo whose movie podcast I rotate in between Taylor Swift albums while I walk—and he even published his first novel, How Lucky, last year.
Will’s greatest relevance to me, though, comes from his weekly newsletter. Although my interest in something like this owes to Dorothy, Will’s weekly newsletter provided the skeleton for what this project began as and has become. I only know about SubStack because of him, my structure loosely mimics his, and, although my writing leans more raw and experimental than his does, I would say even my tone often emulates his.
And why wouldn’t it? The guy is amazing: he writes thoughtfully and jovially, he’s a proud parent and rabid sports fan, he excels in prose of all forms, and he invites actual connection in a way only one other media personality has. In his newsletter, he invites readers to handwrite him letters, to which he responds every time. I’ve written him twice and his first response was kind and supportive at such a magnitude that I’ve never removed it from my nightstand. I like the guy a lot, but I also just plain admire him and how he does what he does.
But.
Fine, fine. Yes, I’ve provided context for the “letter to Will” part of my long-term to do list item but not the first word. “Apology”, used here as an adjective to describe the type of letter I want to send, harkens back to an email I sent him in the late summer of 2020. There is an entire newsletter written about this from the following week but, to save a click, it goes like this:
After a miserable day from the second week of distance learning, I read Will’s latest newsletter before going to bed. I never do that; I always save it for one of my weekend morning planking sessions so I can be fully invested. (I’m also optimistic and not exhausted in the morning.) But this time I read it at night and got to read my favorite role model trash remote school as worthless.
I’m probably exaggerating slightly when I say “trashed” and “worthless” but that was how I took it. What really set me off was his refusal to even call it school: he opted for quotation marks around the word every time he used it. It’s strange to think back to that moment because he wasn’t the first to do so but it was one thing to hear complaints from teachers already being harassed daily by Zoom bombers and another thing entirely to read it in his voice. Parasocial relationships can feel strong and, no joke, that newsletter read like a slap in the face to everything that was eating me alive at the time. The same man who has scribbled out kind words and offered thoughtful responses to a sprawling letter had just told me “Your efforts are worthless”.
And I was pissed.
I responded with a scathing rebuke centered on those mocking quotation marks around school. Every word was written from bed, some of the only words I wrote without being upright. Taking him to task for invalidating all of the work to make school exist in spite of restrictions and chastising him for giving more voice to the people who already treat school (but especially this school) like a joke, I channeled all of my anger toward him. Even though he had a point. Even though he hadn’t been that critical. Even though I didn’t really know the guy. Even though I was only weeks into what would become an even worse experience. I took every tick mark personally and blew up at a man who had shown me (and so many others) nothing but kindness.
Had I read it on a Saturday morning, I have no doubt I still would have felt wounded but I doubt I would have written anything back. I would have thought about his perspective more, sure, but I also would have thought to myself “Don’t embarrass yourself by yelling at Will.” The present predicament was no more his fault than Zoom school was mine. I would have weighed things better fresh. I know I would have.
That’s not how it happened, though. I pressed send on my scalding hot vitriol—I didn’t even hesitate. I received back a gentle response that parsed his valid frustrations, mostly lamenting the childhood time his young boys were losing to be kids. He was even apologetic: he clearly hadn’t intended disrespect to teachers or anyone else. He had written from his heart and his heart knew what his kids were getting from their screens in isolation was not what they (or any kid) needed.
Shame had been added to my own frustration. That made it through immediately, but the desire to apologize took a few more days. I wasn’t ready to apologize then; I still felt I was right in a lot of what I said, albeit to the wrong person and with the woefully wrong tone and medium. But I wanted to apologize and mend a fence, even if it was a mostly imagined one-way fence.
In the months that followed, though, I stopped reading Will’s newsletter. I didn’t check for his movie reviews or articles; I forgot about his upcoming novel. A lot of that was shame but some of it was self-preservation too: I didn’t want to risk another instance of painfully placed quotation marks. I didn’t want to reel again, and I didn’t want to face the obvious truth that my message wasn’t going to resonate with him.
But I put “Apology Letter to Will” on my list very soon afterward anyway, committing myself to returning to write it when more space and time had allowed things to die down.
And they did. Although I ignored the emails, I always saw them and one day the title announced his novel was being published. I leapt in and purchased it, read all about his process and excitement, and then fell back into my rhythm of reading his stuff every Saturday. I told people about the book, purchased it in multiple formats to facilitate lending, posted my review everywhere I could, and even began to explore his podcast. I pressed the like button on newsletters, even posted comments on a few of them.
Each time I found myself more and more determined to write that apology letter. It was never a priority…but it was always a consideration when an hour presented itself. I needed to face my own shame, but mostly I wanted to do right by a good person, even though my words and apology would mean nothing to him. This was about doing the right thing, just as I had so many times with other people before.
When I listened to his podcast review of Dear Evan Hansen defending the character and kids like him, I took that as a sign that it was time. I had paper ready and at my table and an afternoon window set aside to write him back after my walk and lunch.
After the final notes of Speak Now, I chose a podcast episode from last year that included Space Jam 2 among five movies I had seen. Hearing Will and Tim dunk on that sounded like a pleasant listening experience for the breezy morning. I pressed play, hummed along with their theme song, and then excitedly upped the volume for the banter-filled intro.
Which included a rant by Will about the utter worthless garbage that was remote school. This was not him caught in the moment watching his energetic kids become glum but months removed from it. That thing he’d put quotation marks around was now an extended punchline to a joke. If plain text in Gmail was a slap before, this was a sucker punch to the back of my head. This was defiant trashing of something that warped who I am and damn near took me down and it was beyond pointless per the braying laugh of the same guy I pleaded to at least respect it.
I felt myself hardening. My fists became clenched, my sunscreen-slathered face became red and hot. My breathing and heart rate each accelerated—the latter’s spike was visible in my FitBit data—and my stride became more stomp than step, even though my internal emotion was predominantly sadness and hurt. I felt burned, not so much by him but by my insistence on trying to move forward.
But I calmed myself down. I refused to turn off the episode and I listened all the way through. I’m not sure I can say I “enjoyed” it—my handful of chuckles were reluctant—but I tolerated that feeling in my chest. It was morning. It was beautiful out. I’ve had a month of amusement listening to the podcast. I didn’t want to give that up.
When I returned home, I began mentally drafting my apology letter but I soon reached a crossroads. In every approach, I began by owning up to my inappropriate tone in the email, carefully providing context and narrating my mindset. Whereas before I had imagined pivoting to gratitude-based mentions about the newsletter or novel or even Major League Baseball, I couldn’t do the same anymore.
Instead I was caught in a loop trying to convince him his attitude was wrong. Every time I pushed myself away from defending school, I boiled. I was a pushover; I was rolling over and conceding my point. I have empathy for his kids—and lots of people—but there just wasn’t a choice at the time. The remote process of course wasn’t a one-to-one port of being in a classroom, but it wasn’t worthless! It was only how I had said what I said that was wrong; the content remained a true and valid rebuttal to his callous dismissal.
I fell into a vortex. I would feel the heat rising and I would resist. I’d talk myself down, back into composure and precise words chosen for precise purposes. Focus on your experience at that moment, I’d tell myself, and then I’d resume the word-sketching in my head trying to exude kindness and remorse and then I would hear his pejorative dismissal in that voice that typically comforted me and entertained me and I’d start gathering evidence and profanity would start slipping into my imagined sentences and then the words would explode on my imagined page and I’d find the razor sharp edge on every word I thought ready to attack his voice for piling on just like all the students, teachers, administrators, parents, colleagues, and experts did in questioning everything and wanting it to be perfect for them but also treating it over and over like nothing even as I continued to pour from the same empty cup and get more and more dizzy and and and
And then I’d calm down. I’d chastise myself for falling down that hole again. I wasn’t going to explode at Will again for punctuation and podcast banter already celebrating their next birthdays. I would resist the resurfacing of that tone. The whole point was rectifying that tone.
I stared at the actual paper. I imagined my gentle, deferential, but definitely honest first few paragraphs. I would follow that by praising the newsletter and how it has become an anchor and then chase that with praise for How Lucky; I might even make a joke about how I know he blocked my email address because I never got my book plate but accepted that as my due punishment. All warm and kind and self-flagellating. I could picture it all, every line through signing my name.
But then I imagined a PS. I would return to the content of what I had said in that scathing email and explain how my year ended with COVID and Zoom. And I’d point out how I’d heard that podcast episode where he ripped Zoom school to shreds as worthless and pointless and a social failure for everyone but teachers and I’d note that he is wrong. I’d explain how, on the day I complimented and thanked every member of my classes—most of whom I had originally known only through Zoom school—that one student listened to my words and put his two hands over his sternum as I wrapped it up. It hadn’t registered with me right away because I hadn’t used that gesture in a year; I might even have forgotten about it. But that gesture was one I taught my classes during that worthless, pointless time. The student had been there when I did. His camera had been off but yet it had meant enough to him that he did it instinctively almost twenty months later. Sure, the AP scores and pass rates dropped from excellent to merely really good, and sure I hate the job now and had the worst year of my life doing it, but how can it have been meaningless, Will? How could it have been pointless? If the tiny things we did together meant something to him, Will, how could all of it have meant nothing?
My brain ended on three letters. I had tears in my eyes by that point, but those three letters would be the perfect ending. QED. Quot erat demonstratum. That which has been proven. The end of a proof. Will was wrong; I was right. I knew it. The student’s hands had conveyed to me truth that people like Will (but far more often colleagues, administrators, parents, experts) had insisted to me wasn’t there. My brain thought those letters with growling defiant conviction. I knew it was true and I knew that I had been right. I took a deep breath…
…and decided not to write a letter to Will. It wasn’t going to convince him of anything and, clearly, I still wasn’t ready to write it as the pure apology I want it to be. Maybe someday that will change and I will be capable of it; maybe it won’t. But I hope it does. In the meantime, I emulate him every week in this newsletter, I thank him in the acknowledgments for Sweet Appeal, and, of course, I keep reading his newsletter.
For now, though, apologizing isn’t the important thing. What matters most is that I reached a point in which I could end a discussion about Zoom school and the whole miserable last two years with QED and that my now-former student’s tiny gesture had sealed for me that at least some of what I lost of myself during that time mattered. I don’t need to put it in a letter to a stranger to certify it; I can see it as clear as day. I’m not going to forget it, either.
But I can say that stuff later. For now I turn the page. When 1989 wraps up in an hour, I’ll turn on another podcast episode and cross my fingers Will doesn’t mention school. He probably won’t.
But if he does I’ll just skip forward. I know I’m going to keep listening.
QED
Content Consumption
FILM
(Each link leads to my full review on www.filmsofsteele.com.)
The History of the Downward Spiral (2022)
Not exactly a movie so much as a first-person reflective exercise, I watched with rapt attention and pondered the nature of things from it. That counts for something.
Religion is scary. Cancer is scary. Yet somehow people are scarier, and this horror film taps into that hard, even with an exceedingly thin runtime.
On the one hand, Ragnarok is far superior and way more consistent. On the other hand, three cheers for trying to make an MCU rom-com and (mostly) succeeding.
A quiet film about companionship and hope as well as the first appearance of milk and cookies in the west. It’s really stripped down but there’s a lot to like.
This is the first week in which I wrote out three separate complete outlines for the newsletter. I was geared up to complete each of the first two…and then I listened to that podcast episode and…here we are! Maybe the other two will resurface.
Also did some baking this week! Both smaller (and one repeat) but here they are:
Book announcement is getting closer too. I won’t forget to advertise that prominently.