A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Class

I don’t remember her. Not her face. Not her voice. Not her clothing.
Not even her written words of approval or criticism in the margins of my papers.

Last week I filled out an admission form for West Valley College. I received an email with my student ID and began the online registration process. Spring Semester 2007. Creative Writing 070A. After I hit submit I encountered an error code. “This course is a repeat and does not meet the allowed grades requirement.” I had no idea what it meant.
I called Admissions several times. When I finally reached somebody I was informed that the system was down and that no information was available. “Call back after twelve.”
I went to see the movie Freedom Writers with my friend Margie and afterward she drove me to West Valley College. Some errors require personal attention.
“Oh, I talked to you this morning.” The young woman punched my social security number into the keyboard and stared at the computer screen.
“You’ve already taken this class.”
“No I haven’t.” Immediately CNN reports about stolen social security numbers swamped my mind. “Maybe somebody else used my number.”
She turned the screen so I could see the entries and continued. “You took 070A in 1988.”
“I don’t remember!”
Later, at home, I would search our conversation for a hint of embarrassment. There was none. I didn’t take the class before. The computer was wrong.
What happens now?”
“You’ll have to fill out a petition form.” She handed me a sheet of paper.
I wrote my name, my address, my social security number. When I came to the big empty space, titled Reason for Repeat, I was still irritated and wrote: I don’t remember taking English 070A.
On the way out Margie and I laughed. What else could we do? Stuff happens. If I started to dig into my memory to put the year 1988 into perspective, I didn’t voice it.
“That was nineteen years ago,” Margie said, “We were still working downtown.”
I admitted to some paranoia. “I thought they aren’t allowed to ask for a social security number. That woman made me say it out loud and I had to write it on the petition.” Paranoia is a rather bizarre, nonsensical and helpless shadow that seems to be getting larger as we get older. Margie knows all about it. She thinks the UPS driver stole her checks. Somebody stole them. It took months for the charges to stop. Months for the phone calls from stores to stop. Now she shreds everything that has her name on it, even mail addressed to occupant. It’s a sign of the times, we agree.
On the way home, between suspicions and speculations, I began to think about the possibility that I had really taken a class I couldn’t recall. “I’ll have to look at an old calendar and my journals.”

And now I know. I wrote a four-page poem in that class. Thirteen times thirteen lines. Thirteen syllables per line. I called it Breakfast of Champions. It was my obituary. As assignment I had to keep a journal of constructing the poem – six days, twenty minutes a day. I find other signs that point back to 1988. A memoir piece that I edited in 1993. A fictional story about a traveling button. The description of a room. And a list of favorite words, written on September 19, 1988. Words like Hottentotts, Klapperschlange, Bumblebee, and Knickerbocker.
These pieces were composed on my first computer, Twobits, the one without Windows and without a graphics card. I recall its Undelete button. I never quite trusted its capacity for bringing back eliminated text. I remember that I printed my homework by pressing Shift and PrintScreen. Something prevented me from transferring the material to a new computer later. It had to do with new software that didn’t accept WordPerfect documents, though some survived on yellowing sheets of continuous paper. I found them in a folder of unsorted writing.
But who was the instructor? I still don’t remember her.
I see a flickering image of women gathered around a table. Is that a classroom in the Language Arts Building at West Valley College? Or is my mind flipping through scenes from Freedom Writers?

I think her name might have been Sanchez. I think she was young. I think we read “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg. A ten-dollar paperback. I think she inspired me to write during a time of self-doubt. I turned 50 in her class.
Now I am 68. I have to wait a week before I know the outcome of my petition. Because I wanted to be prepared I already paid fifty-five dollars on Amazon.com for three textbooks. They are used and in need of slipcovers, but the new ones would have cost more than 200 dollars. How can kids afford to go to college nowadays?
I am excited about this class and look forward to interaction with young students and the instructor. Her name is Lenore Harris. Will I remember her in another nineteen years? In 2026 when I am eighty-seven?