JD was here

James Dominic Sablan is a burly young lad. Among the 108 6th graders that attend my social studies class, J. D. is a presence hard to miss. Tall though not gangly, his stature is visible without being intrusive or repressive. He is quiet and gentle most of the time, but his peers are clear that one would not cross his path lightly.

Before the school broke off for the Thanksgiving holidays, J. D. got hold of some sticky labels and papered the front of the social studies and language arts class doors with “J. D. was here” signs. As an act of a 6th grader, this was hardly surprising. In the long and globally widespread “Kilroy was here” tradition that mars many a visit to popular parks and remote cultural sites around the world, J. D. is a minor and infrequent player. Also, it took me two weeks last month to white-out the many one-liners that previous 6th graders had left on their Ancient Civilization textbooks, all declaring in one form or another that someone had indeed “been here.” J. D.’s is hardly a solo performer. Indeed, students fight over the chore of wiping the chalkboard clean after each class session. Once the permission to erase the board is given, a horde of flailing arms would thrust on to the slate, leaving chalk marks of various designs declaring that “so-and-so was here.”

A quick ocular survey of public facilities, table tops and arm chair undersides, school bathroom and hallway graffiti, and textbook spontaneous editorial comments and inscriptions will reveal how widespread the “so-and-so was here” occurrence is being practiced. The habit is being addressed head on in many classrooms to discourage, if not totally abolish, its frequency, but the threat of harsh disciplinary measures had not been effective in curtailing the practice. One suspects that a more fundamental question need be asked: “Whence comes the urge to declare one’s presence, and to let it be known far and wide?”

Leaving evidence of the significance and meaning of one’s life is a universal human preoccupation. Currently showing locally is Oliver Stone’s “Alexander.” Critics have ravaged the cinematic merits of Mr. Stone’s latest rendition. It is a movie “only the history buffs” will love, we are told. And even then, History Channel’s upcoming scholarly presentation on the subject might be a better fare. My wife confessed that only did she have a hard time keeping up not only with the historical thread, the geographical locations, and the characters, she could not follow the complex psychosocial Oedipus complex overlay Stone wove into the film’s plot. It is also not easy to dismiss, given Mr. Stone’s record, the movie’s allusion to the current events abiding in the area between the Euphrates and the Indus Rivers, particularly George W’s persevering and stolid resolve to have Americans be a prominent and vital fixture in the region.

For this musing, my interest is Alexander’s habit of leaving “Alexander was here” signs all over the place. Most prominent, of course, is Ptolomy’s Alexandria of Egypt whose legendary library was used as an image in the early marketing of the personal computer. Apple Computer aimed to wire every home around the world to the wisdom of the Library of Alexandria. From the Kyber Pass up the Hindu Kush, to the lower Indus Valley of the Mohenjo-Daro fame, and points leading west to Babylon, sites named Alexandria flourished in the wake of the young Macedonian’s forcible spread of Greek civilization across the eastern section of the old Persian Empire. In a stroke of political genius, Alexander retained the ruling houses he conquered to continue with their rule, making the introduction of new ways palatable to the local culture. Added the despotic Persian rule he replaced, Alexander proved to be a breath of fresh air hailed as a liberator, and not as a despised colonizing presence.

Even in good old U.S.A., a little Virginia settlement across the Potomac, which now services such institutional behemoths of the Capitol City as the Department of Defense’s Pentagon and the National Ronald Reagan International Airport, is named Alexandria.

Alexander’s legacy earned him the appellation “The Great.” Historians have charted the same thread on other legacies from Julius Caesar to Colin Powell. Here we might find a clue on how to deal with the insistence of the J. D.s, the Camilles and the Kevins, the Merabels and the Michaels, the Simeons and the Shaneeses, the Jodans and the Jhaneekas, the Richmonds and the Rantas, to have their presence prominently known. We might, with all pedagogical subtlety, push the question: “J. D. ‘the who’ was here.” That shifts the emphasis from the usually disciplinary objective question of why one is posting signs against regulations, to the introspective questions of identity, “Who do you say you are?” and vocation. “What will you do about it?”

Both questions would be similar to WWII Holocaust-fame Victor Frankl’s “search for meaning.” One would heed his witness that meaning is ultimately the self-story one chooses at any given moment under any condition, not a function of genetics, social status, economic class, circumstances or opportune times. It is the story one tells about one’s life, the affirmation of which can be avowed even in the most horrendous of situations like Frankl’s incarceration in a genocidal camp.

The period between Thanksgiving Day and New Year is in the western hemisphere a time of deep reflection about who we are, and what we do with our lives—of being and becoming. These were questions once reserved for royalties and those unencumbered by the daily preoccupations of the working class. Not anymore. With the spreading emphasis on the value of each individual life, the democratization of meaning has left the choice of creating one’s identity and vocation a matter of every individual’s option.

So, after affirming that J. D. in fact “is here,” and getting J. D. to clean up the classroom doors on aesthetic rather than punitive grounds, one must now further ask all the J. D. inscribers: Who does J. D. say s/he is, and what does s/he intend to do about it? I believe that if teachers do ask the questions, and the J. D.’s of the world deign to answer them, the learning process might actually be significantly deepened.

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Vergara is a Social Studies 6th grade teacher at San Vicente Elementary School and writes a regular column for the Saipan Tribune.