Harvard Taught Me Persuasion
By Nedward Baldewoman | Sunday, April 6, 2008
So if you read this paper you are probably already familiar with me, or at least what the yahoos in charge here want you to think. But I’m here to set the record straight, so thanks to The Review for offering me space in the newspaper to set the record straight. Oh wait, I mean I would thank the paper if the editor had offered me space, but I was forced to persuade Emily for the space. Don’t worry about me though; I can be very persuasive what with my dual Harvard degree (JD and MBA—yeah. . .I’m accomplished) and my powerful friends. How persuasive? Well, I recently ‘persuaded’ my friend Timmy to quit his job. It was actually pretty grim—after my ‘persuasive’ talk with him he sent me this:
ADRIFT! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?
So sailors say, on yesterday,
Just as the dusk was brown,
One little boat gave up its strife,
And gurgled down and down.
What was I supposed to do with this? Was it some sort of veiled threat? Don’t answer that, it’s a rhetorical question. Of course it’s a threat—I didn’t almost get an MFA in creative writing for nothing. With this poem, he was saying something like, “I want you to reach into your mailbox only to find your hand covered in ashes, and then you’ll peer into the box only to find a broken urn with your father’s name on it.” 1.) I don’t like my father, so that doesn’t bother me—he’s the reason I couldn’t finish my MFA; and 2.) I googled the first line of the poem, and guess what Timmy left off the end of the poem? This:
But angels say, on yesterday,
Just as the dawn was red,
One little boat o’erspent with gales
Retrimmed its masts, redecked its sails
Exultant, onward sped!
I didn’t almost get an MFA for nothing. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll tell you what led up to Tim’s butchering of Emily Dickenson.
My friend Timmy is the president of the school I went to as an undergrad—back when I was part of the unenlightened patriarchy. Anyhoo, I had Tim down to the estate to break the news to him; his services were no longer necessary. Yeah, I was firing him. Maybe for some people it’s hard to fire a friend, but I’m pretty heartless. For instance, instead of spending the dough on a coffin when my dog died, I just rolled her up in some old linens and threw her in the recycling compacter—and she was the one who supported my quest for life as a playwright. Not only was I saving money, but I was saving the earth. Yeah, my wife was sort of appalled, but my mistress was turned on, so I like to think I came out in the black on that one.
Getting back to Tim, when I broke the news to him, we were sitting on the dais in the dining room (I’m a short man), and I told him, “Tim,” I said, “we’ve been through a lot these last couple of years; we really have.” I looked up through my eyebrows to see if he was taking the hint, but he was just nodding in silent agreement. So I continued, “I’ve been talking with some of the wo/men on the Board, and we’ve had to make a hard decision.” Still no comprehension. He was going to make this painful for the both of us. “We think the school needs some new blood at the top, to get some of these alumni yahoos off of our back, you know.” “You mean me?” He asked, startled from his post-prandial daze. “‘fraid so Timmy.”
“But we still have work to do, you and I,” he started to say before I cut him off with a wave of the hand. He started to choke up a bit, putting his formidable head in his hands. I called for some more port, and sipped away as I waited for him to say something. The awkwardness of the situation was intensifying with each minute of silence.
Finally, I patted him on the back as he walked through the front door, and told him to e-mail me his resignation announcement. He looked back at me with his big eyes and impressive jowls, and I pressed my hand to his, saying, “glad to see you’ve taken this so well. I’ll talk to you later, Tim.” Quickly shutting the door, I unwound by reading my copy of 02138.
When I read the paper the next morning I was half-expecting to read about the tragic death of my good friend Tim. I wasn’t so lucky. That was when I received the poem, under the subject line “Resignation Announcement.” Sighing, I proceeded with my investigation. After that I whipped out his ‘real’ announcement and sent it to the school. Did Tim really think he could outsmart me? Heck, I’ve got a degree from Harvard—two actually. n
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