Dr. Knecht

In which I finally introduce a new character in an action-packed Blog entry pretty much guaranteed to attract more subscribers.

It saddens me to report that last week, just like Gatsby’s count of enchanted objects, subscriptions to this Blog diminished by one. I now have just two subscribers who may or may not be my second cousins.

Perhaps the defector was uninterested in my philosophical musings in my most recent post about the relationship between technological change and the sorry state of current world literature, or perhaps he (she? they?) was put off by my metaphor comparing the Romantic Movement of the 19th Century to the recent dissemination of the zombie virus—a metaphor which I have now come to recognise was probably a bit forced. Either way, the predominant emotion I have been experiencing these past few days has been utter despair. The apocalypse has indeed led to an even greater degree of alienation and suffering than all those talking heads on MSNBC-Fox could have ever predicted.

Fortunately, I am optimistic that positive change is on the immediate horizon, because this week’s Blog marks a turning point in my literary style, and I have a feeling there’s a chance you may find yourself quite engaged by the lively prose that follows. The subject is, as promised, a character sketch of old Dr. Knecht, a teacher of both mathematics and physics at Riverview Academy for over thirty-five years and upper-Form Dean for at least a decade. As I briefly mentioned in last week’s entry, he was the only member of the faculty whose eyes were open wide enough to see the signs that the zombie apocalypse was indeed coming.

Dr. Knecht was one of our most beloved teachers for a large portion of his career, known for his vast store of not-especially-funny but incredibly culturally offensive math jokes (“the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws of the other two hides”), his endless supply of wacky neckties, and his generally quirky personality. He was the kind of teacher students mock publicly but secretly envy for having the confidence to exhibit at least a shred of individuality.

But gradually quirkiness gave way to no-holds-barred insanity.

At first, the signs were subtle. There was the morning, for example, when I was complaining at the faculty lounge water cooler about the onset of my third kidney stone in as many years. While other teachers offered me their sympathies (including “thoughts and prayers” from the more religious types), and one or two even recommended a good urologist, Knecht pulled me into a corner, his eyes darting around the room until he was convinced no one else was within earshot, at which time he proceeded to write down an address for me on a napkin. Beach Street in Chinatown. You’ll see a sign for a noodle shop there but it’s just a front, he said, muttering under his breath. Take the steps down to the basement, he said, and knock exactly seven times on the door to Apartment 1B. When the Fat Man answers, tell him you’ve come to see Disco Mike about procuring some of his highest quality Eye of Newt. Bring lots of cash, he said, and make sure he prints you out a copy of all the precautionary info in English—you don’t want to OD on this stuff! Just follow the instructions on the bottle, he said, and the stone will pass without incident in three to four days.

Initially, I thought Knecht was just trying to cheer me up with an obvious joking reference to Macbeth. You know, a sort of crossing-the-aisle display of collegiality, to signal that even though he specialised in STEM, he had also learned a thing or two about Shakespeare back in his college days. By showing his cultural competency in my field, perhaps Knecht was letting me know in the subtlest of ways that we shared a deeper connection than I might have realized, and that I could therefore count on his unwavering empathy. Knecht’s literary allusion, therefore, was his attempt to show me that he truly understood, on the deepest of levels, and that he could genuinely feel my pain—both the severe lower back pain I was currently experiencing, as well as the sensation I would confront several days later that felt like razor blades slicing up my urethra.

But no, it turned out he really meant it. He really wanted me to go to Chinatown to procure some Eye-of-freaking-Newt.

To me, that was the first indication of Knecht’s mental deterioration, although there may have been other signs I was oblivious to, since I had never spent too much quality time with the man. But in the months that followed, it didn’t exactly take a Ph.D. in Physics to figure out that something was amiss.

First there were the rumors that he was sneaking into the biology room to have deep philosophical conversations with some of the laboratory mice. Next came the casual but supremely paranoid lunch table chitchat in which Knecht conveyed his strong opinion that aliens were stealing the caps off of his red felt-tip grading pens.

Then, Knecht started replacing all of the posters in his office. Down came the trite reminders that “Dishonesty is Never an Option” and that one should “Always Assume Good Intentions,” and up went “John 3:16.” The inspirational quotes “Be the Change You Want to See in the World” and “A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skilled Sailor” were replaced by “The End is Nigh” and “How Can Millions of Mayans be Wrong?” The only poster from Knecht’s early years that didn’t get ripped down was the enormous one right above his desk, the one with those classic 1970s cartoon buzzards and the caption “Patience my butt. I’m going to kill something!” To this day, I still have no idea why he left that one up.

Gradually, Dr. Knecht also started to revise his AP Physics curriculum, eliminating some of the units often regarded as a bit niche (optics, sound waves, and whatnot) so that he could devote his entire second semester to a deep-dive study of projectiles and ballistics. For weeks and even months on end, one could always find Knecht and his students milling around on our athletic fields, tinkering with an array of variegated catapults. He also petitioned the administration to allow him to extend the scope of his traditional and always-beloved “egg drop” competition, so that students would be able to hurl not only eggs off the top of our soccer stadium, but also therapy pets borrowed from the guidance office and perhaps even an underclassman or two. Not surprisingly, the administration rejected his proposal for insurance reasons.

For the remaining years of his career at Riverview Academy, students simply referred to Dr. Knecht as “The Dean of Doom.” Every time a student came into his office bent out of shape about any of those small concerns that adolescents often blow out of proportion, Knecht was quick to provide the student with a much-needed sense of perspective.

If a senior complained that her history teacher was a particularly harsh, unfair grader whose impossible midterm practically guaranteed she had no chance of getting into her Early Decision school, Knecht would reassure her that an Ivy League degree would mean absolutely nothing in a world on the brink of utter economic collapse, a world facing alarming shortages of nearly every important natural resource, a world in which anyone owning material possessions of any value would have to be on constant high alert to make sure nomads weren’t breaking into their house. Stop studying now, Knecht would say, and focus on the only class that really matters: gym.

If a student came to his office seeking emotional support because a recent romantic breakup was making it hard to stay focused on schoolwork, Knecht would once again help them see the bigger picture. Whaddya need a girlfriend or boyfriend for? he would ask. Tryin’ to practice playing house so you can have a nice bourgeois American family some day? Wanna make sure you have 2.4 kids keeping you company while you watch the world go up in flames? So you can all sit there holding hands and singing Kumbaya after your dog Fluffy fries like an egg on the back porch? Think your white picket fence’ll keep random strangers from setting up camp in your backyard? he would ask. Forget relationships and go back to gym. And no, I’m not giving you a late pass, he would say.

Parents really up in arms because you got moved down from Honors French? They’re threatening to sue the school? Tell your parents to go #$%&@, Knecht would say. French is a sissy language. How many sissies do you think’ll still be around to communicate with you when the Armageddon comes? When the undead start chasing you outta town, threatening to eat your brains, are you gonna sit in a bistro and politely order a croque monsieur, or are you just gonna shove a ham and cheese sandwich down your pants and get the #$%&@ outta Dodge? Mon Dieu, he’d say, it’s the same goddamn thing! My advice: drop French altogether and double up on gym. Take lots of #$%&@ gym—if you’ll pardon my French, he’d say.

As I’m sure you would probably guess, after a year or two of this erratic behavior the Dean of Doom just had to go. We’d had eccentrics on the faculty before, but it was Knecht’s potty mouth more than anything else that really got the Trustees up in arms. That and his culturally biased attitude toward the French. And no doubt his insensitive, politically incorrect use of the word “sissy.”

Of course, the Dean of Doom had tenure for over three decades, so it was nearly impossible to fire the man. And there were certainly some dissenting voices among the faculty who lobbied hard for him, especially within the Phys. Ed department. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that the Head of School was pulling out all the stops to pressure him to take early retirement.

But before the administration could get Knecht to agree to any terms, one sunny day in April, just a few weeks before finals, he simply disappeared. He took all of his new posters with him too, although he left almost all of his other belongings in his office. No one from Riverview Academy has seen him since.

In a way I feel sort of bad. My faculty friends and I would always make fun of Knecht, even before he went completely off the deep end. Made fun of the way he would sometimes take power naps right on the floor of the senior corridor, forcing students to navigate around his spread-eagled body to get to their lockers. Made fun of the fact that he handmade much of his own clothing from natural materials (tree bark shoes, hemp underwear, pigeon-feather jacket). And when, in our cruelest, cattiest moments some of my colleagues and I played Riverview Academy Survivor over drinks on Friday afternoons when the school week was over, he was always among the first faculty members to get voted off the island. But now the joke seems to be on us.

After all, he was right, wasn’t he? And the rest of us were completely oblivious.