I would like to introduce you to THREE of my English teachers:

Ms. Edwards, 7th grade,

Ms. Schmutter, 8th grade,

Ms. Kranthammer, 9th grade.

All three of them said I was a lousy writer.

Ms. Edwards told us that she would give out "zeros." Anyone who got three zeros would fail. She would stand in front of the classroom if seventh graders got feisty and say, "Three...two...one...zero! Who wants one?" One time, she yelled, "TRIPLE ZERO!" Everyone froze. Except me. I exploded. I had not been making noise, and now I was failing the class.

She told the class the Titanic sank because it was overloaded. I pointedly reminded her of that iceberg. She ridiculed me. Next day, I came in with the usual stack of books on the subject. She took me aside, and admitted she was wrong and I was right.

Would she apologize?

No...that might disrupt the class.

After that, we were enemies. I was delighted when she fled New York to an ashram in India at the end of the year.

Ms. Schmutter told my parents I wasn't much of a writer. They stared at her, as my previous 8th grade English teacher (we had two per year) said to them, "I don't know what that boy of yours is going to do, but he's going to be a great writer."

Ms. Kranthammer looked like a more flat-chested version of Meg Tilly, and I thought she was cute until she told me I was a lousy writer, writing it on a paper I did for her.

In college, the professor of my US Foreign Policy class, a visiting prof named David Edwards, wrote down on my first paper that I needed to take a writing course.

At the end of the year, after I got an A on my paper on US-Canada relations, he asked me if he could keep it if I wanted him to write me a letter of recommendation. I furiously reminded him of what he said about that first paper, and that I wouldn't let him clean my toilet.

I have an MFA in Creative Writing now. Got straight A's. I learned from Frank McCourt, Walter Lord, my MFA instructors, but most of all, Roger Clemens. Writing is pitching. The batter is the reader.

If you say I'm a lousy writer, you've just invited a fastball aimed at your skull.

Teachers have no business trashing young students.

Ever.

Period.

That’s all I got.