I never cease to marvel at the human brain – how some memory from the past suddenly comes to the surface. Where is this stuff stored – and what causes it to re-appear? One cannot purposely cause these things to show up, so how does this happen?
One of these memories came back to me concerning an event that occurred while I was teaching at Ravenna High School.
I had a small office just to the left of the regular classroom/lab. It was at an angle to the main room and the students could not see in while seated at their desks, so I seldom closed the door. I informed them that I had an assistant in there whose name was Igor, and he was large, ugly, and rather violent. During my lectures I would sometimes look over to my left at the open office door and pretend to converse with Igor, asking his opinion concerning one of my statements, or what he thought of some answer or comment from a student.The students played along and we had fun with it.
As a result Igor became quite a famous celebrity throughout the science department.
Those of you who are familiar with the Frankenstein movies will remember that Dr. Frankenstein had an assistant called Igor. He was large, ugly, and talked with a growl because his neck had been previously broken by a botched hanging. This didn’t kill him but broke his neck, which grew back crooked. It also affected his voice, his gait, and mangled him into a grotesque-looking monster.
IGOR from “Frankenstein”
So I borrowed Igor as my virtual lab assistant.
Each year on Halloween the school had “dress-up day”. A student could wear a costume to class if the classroom teacher would permit. I was OK with it and the students had some fun, but needless to say not much serious learning occurred on that day.
Curt, one of my students, informed me that he had a gorilla suit and asked me if it was OK to wear it to class on dress-up day. This gave me an idea. I asked Curt if he would like to be Igor. If so, he could put on his gorilla suit, hide in the small office before the other students arrived, and I would call him out at an appropriate time. He liked the idea and agreed to do this.
The class showed up on Halloween with students dressed as witches, goblins, ghosts and various other costumes. The place looked like the Star Wars bar – I didn’t know whether to laugh or go home.
One guy was dressed as a cowboy and was continually playing with his guns. I became annoyed and scolded him. He would quit for awhile, but then resume twirling his guns and practicing his “quickdraw”.
I looked over toward the open door of my office where Curt was hiding and said, ”Igor, come out here and take care of this guy”.
Out stumbled Curt in his gorilla suit, roaring loudly. He chased the startled “cowboy“ around the classroom, out the door, and up and down the hallway. The other students roared with laughter!
As I stated previously, not much learning occurred on dress-up day, but now Igor was famous around the entire school.