I am glad that I am not a very important person. I am glad that no one might attempt to write a biography of my life, exposing all my sins and errors, my crassness and laziness, my pettiness and my wastefulness, the slights I gave to others and the misjudgments I gave to myself.
Along with the sigh of relief that my personal faults will never be exposed is the relief that professional faults that are not my own will never be ascribed to me—that no assiduous researcher will discover in dusty files ill-written, badly-organized, and faultily-constructed documents with my signature at the bottom. Reader, I did not write them!
As chairman of a college English department, I was asked at times by faculty members to submit letters to support their applications for promotions, for sabbatical leaves, for research grants, and so forth. Usually, the document would appear on my desk already composed by the applicant and ready for my signature. I remember the first of those documents: as mentioned above, ill-written, badly-organized, and faultily-constructed. “I can’t sign this crap,” I said to myself, and poised my pen, not to affix my signature, but to edit the text. However, I did not know where to begin, the text was so jumbled. Better to re-write the whole thing, I thought—until my better second thought told me that I had not the desire to expend my time and effort on the project— nor the sitzfleisch.
So, balancing a possible diminution of my reputation as a writer against the certainty of being rid of the project, I said the hell with it and indeed used the pen to sign at the bottom of the page.
And since English teachers can’t write, I was to repeat the charade several other times afterwards.
*
One day I was approached by a faculty member I’ll call MR (basically because those were her initials). Would I write a recommendation for her to support her application for promotion? (Groan.) “Write it yourself, and give it to me,” I told her. “I’d really like you to do it,” she responded. (Trapped.) “OK, give me your materials and I’ll deal with it.” The next day my mailbox was stuffed.
Now let me digress here to explain that just then MR was making noises about presenting the department with a proposal to make some sort of alteration in procedure that could limit the chairman’s flexibility in dealing with a future issue. A few days after the mailbox stuffing and just prior to the next department meeting, I approached MR and gently whispered into her earhole, “Maria, I am really against that proposal.” She blew me off. Her proposal passed, everyone subsequently forgot about it, and I of course ignored it.
The day following the meeting, her supporting materials were back in her mailbox.
She didn’t know the first rule of politics.
