The lesson called Garfield Shainline - Sunday School teacher

Instructor, Sept, 1998 by Jerry Spinelli

Editor's Note: Everyone has one: a teacher they'll never forget. Jerry Spinelli, the author of numerous children's books including the Newbery Award-winning Maniac Magee, kicks off our column saluting unforgettable educators. Spinelli originally included this essay in his recent book Knots in My Yo-yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid (Knopf, 1998) and delivered it as a speech during the "Favorite Authors Remember Their Favorite Teachers" breakfast sponsored by Scholastic Book Clubs at the 1998 International Reading Association Convention.

If I ever came close to meeting God, I think it was not in the stars but in Garfield Shainline.

For a man with such a big name, Garfield Shainline was quite little, not as short as a dwarf, but almost. As a 13-year-old, I was already taller than he. It was said that he shopped for clothes in the children's departments. His white hair was crewcut. Tufts of black hair sprouted from his ears and from the pea-size mole on his chin.

He worked at the YMCA in a wire mesh-enclosed compartment in the locker room. If you were taking a shower, you stopped at the cage and he handed you a small bar of white soap. I'm sure he had other duties, but to most of the boys in town, who never knew his name, that was the sum of who he was: the tiny old man at the Y who hands you soap.

But he was something else, too. When I was a teenager, he was my Sunday school teacher. Every Sunday morning we sat around a heavy round table in the Christian Education Room of First Presbyterian: Garfield Shainline, Teddy Barrett, David Allen, Jay John, Douglas Nagy, me. We barely listened to him as we snickered and whispered and generally behaved like the immature adolescents that we were. We invented silly questions for him. We dared one another to yank out one of his mole hairs. Our favorite pastime was to pretend to drop something so that we had to bend under the table to retrieve it, there to behold the sight that brought us unending mirth: Garfield's tiny feet, shod in tiny brown leather high-top shoes, dangling in the air like a five-year-old's.

Each session concluded with an around-the-table prayer. Sometimes after the usual petitions for world peace and food for the hungry, someone would say, "And God bless Garfield and give him vitamins so he can grow and touch the floor."

Occasionally Garfield gave us a mild scolding, but mostly he smiled good-naturedly or ignored our nonsense and went on with the important thing, the lesson. No matter how we treated him one Sunday, he was glad to see us the next. Undeserving as we were, we received only the highest recommendations in his prayer.

Upon reaching high school age, we left Garfield behind for another teacher. One day someone told us he was ill and in the hospital and would love to have a visit from his boys, as he called us.

I thought about going to see him, but there were too many other things to deal with: sports, grades, girls, friends. When I heard that he had died, I did not think much about it. I did not attend his funeral. Nor, I believe, did the others. But deep inside, even as I pretended to ignore my feelings, I sensed that something had changed forever. I pictured him in that hospital bed, waiting day after day for a visit that never came, and I knew - I knew - that is his final conscious hours, despite it all, he posted to heaven not a bitter thought about his boys.

Garfield Shainline had been long forgotten by most. Even my mother does not remember him. But I do. Oh, yes, I do. In these many years I have wished many times for him a second death, for myself a second chance. And still today he grows and grows inside me, Garfield Shainline, the little man who hands you soap, and I have come at last to learn what he never knew he taught, that Garfield Shainline was not the teacher but the lesson.

BOOKS BY JERRY SPINELLI

Fourth Grade Rats (Apple, reissued 1996; $3.96) is the funny and believable story about two fourth-grade boys who take to heart a the familiar chant:

"First grade babies!

Second grade cats!

Third grade angels!

Fourth Grade Rats!"

Maniac Magee

(Scholastic Trade, reissued 1997; $3.95) is the Newbery Medal-winning story about a very excitable boy who takes the town of Two Mills by storm. With exaggeration, humor, and melodrama that touch on real issues kids face, Maniac Magee is a must-have for every classroom.

Knots in My Yo-yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid (Knopf, 1998; $9.99) is an honest and moving account of the author's adventure-filled childhood.

Wringer (Harper Trophy, reissued 1998; $4.96) is the Newbery Honor-winning story about a nine-year-old boy's struggle to cope with his upcoming birthday, when town tradition dictates that he wring the necks of pigeons wounded at the annual Pigeon Day shoot. Wringer will appeal to preteens and younger teens and is an excellent story to spark discussions about peer pressure.