Pay It Forward

On his first day as a new teacher, Reuben St. Clair goes to meet Principal Morgan. Morgan’s administrative assistant assures Reuben that Morgan always wants to meet all the new teachers. Reuben is suspicious, believing that the assistant’s overly-nice demeanor represents an attempt to overcompensate for how uncomfortable he makes her. Reuben meets Principal Morgan, who is an attractive older white lady: “attractive women always made him hurt, literally, a long pain that started high up in his solar plexus and radiated downward through his gut” (13). Principal Morgan and Reuben have an uncomfortable conversation, in which she tries not to show how uncomfortable his face makes her, and he is angry at her reaction. He maintains that adults usually have a harder time adjusting to face than children do.

At Reuben’s former school in Cincinnati, Reuben had a friend named Lou who would break a yardstick the first time he entered an unfamiliar classroom to establish his authority with new students. When Reuben cautioned that he might get in trouble if the yardstick ever hit a student, Lou reasoned that he had to show unpredictability, and then asked Reuben how he quieted a classroom. Reuben said he never had a problem with unruly students and Lou agrees, “as if he should have known better” (16).