McBride High 02

Disaster at the Globe Theater

Bro. Albert Stein was my freshman English teacher. He was tall and gruff, older than my father, and more than a little intimidating. He brooked no nonsense from the boys and was a stern task-master. I was a little afraid of his bark and didn’t want ever to experience his bite.

Bro. Stein loved Shakespeare and tried his best to instill part of that appreciation in us savages as we struggled through the sonnets and The Merchant of Venice. He also had a beautiful, wooden scale model of the Globe Theatre in London where most of Shakespeare’s greatest plays were performed. The model was stored on the top of a large, glass-encased book cabinet in the front of the classroom. When we were discussing the plays he would get it down and show us how the actors entered and exited the stage and how the sets worked. He absolutely loved that damned model and treated it like an invaluable treasure.

One day Bro. Stein was called out of class by another teacher. He told us to read from the play for five minutes until he returned. Naturally, as soon as the sound of his footsteps died away we were talking and laughing like the irrepressible kids we were. One of the boys ran across the front of the room, opened the door, and peeked down the corridor, making sure Bro. Stein wasn’t standing where he could hear us carousing.

I was sitting in the row closest to one of the blackboards along the wall. As my classmate was returning to his seat, in a moment of teenage insanity I jumped out of my seat and grabbed an eraser from the nearby rail. Without hesitating I fired it at my colleague.

With uncharacteristic precision it flew straight at my target and slammed into his head, chalk dust exploding in a halo-cloud around him. The eraser caromed off his head, flew up in the air, and with unpardonable accuracy crashed into Bro. Stein’s treasured Globe Theater on top the book case, smashing the flimsy balsawood into pieces. Almost in slow motion I could see broken wood fragments flying everywhere. My heart stopped and my stomach dropped into my toes. Holy shit. DISASTER!

The room immediately fell silent. Everyone knew what was about to hit the fan and wanted no part of that scene. Meaning my tender little body was about to suffer a horrible and painful death alone and abandoned by my fellow students.

Minutes later when Bro. Stein re-entered the room he stopped at the threshold and looked around at the silent boys sitting stiffly behind their desks. A career educator, he knew instantly something was wrong.

“Okay,” he demanded. “What’s going on? Out with it.”

Reluctantly, I stood up and stammered and stuttered until the story was told. After I finished Bro. Stein turned around and stared silently up at his precious model. Without a word he walked to his desk, grabbed the chair, and dragged it across the room. He stood on the chair, very gently picked the model up, and brought it to his desk. He glared daggers at me and told me to talk to him after class.

I didn’t hear one word he said for the next half hour. All I could think of was the shit that was about to descend on my head. From Bro Stein and my father. My stomach started rolling over and over.

After class I slowly approached Bro. Stein’s desk and stared down at the model. The eraser had caved in a large section of the roof and badly damaged one of the exterior walls. Luckily, none of the intricate balconies or railings on the interior was broken. But to me the damage looked totally irreparable.

Bro. Stein nailed me with a glare from Hell and told me that I had to fix the damage. It didn’t matter how long it took but it better look perfect when I brought it back. Perfect. Or else.

No way did I want to know what the “or else” meant so I mumbled how sorry I was and promised to repair it. He gently slid the model into a large brown shopping bag, handed it to me, and stomped out of the room. It didn’t take a genius to see he was royally pissed off. Somehow, I had the good sense to hunt for and pick up all the broken pieces I could find on the floor and slip them into the bag.

How I got the model home on the bus without doing more damage escapes me since I also had to carry my books and folders. But I did. Then came the gut-wrenching part where I told my parents what I did and suffered those nasty consequences. They were understandably upset and told me I had to buy everything I needed to fix the model out of my money. They weren’t going to give me one penny. Which is what I fully expected.

After that I took the model to the basement work bench, gently removed it from the bag, and surveyed the damage. It was both better and worse than I initially thought. Better because with all the broken pieces I could see what and where to repair. Worse because the extent of the damage was far greater than I initially thought. Not only would I have to carve new pieces and glue them into place they would have to be painted the exact same color to match the existing undamaged structure.

That Saturday morning I put several of the larger pieces into an envelope and rode my bike to a hobby shop. I showed them to the owner and asked his advice on how to go about repairing a larger model. Lucky for me he loved building scale models. He picked out the right balsawood sheets, glue, a tiny brush, and then the various small bottles of paint based on the colors of the broken pieces. He warned me to prime the wood first or the paint would never look right. Then he wished me luck. He knew I needed it.

I worked at night and on the weekends on that model for weeks and weeks, measuring and re-measuring, trying to be sure each part fit perfectly. Cutting and re-cutting when a part didn’t fit. Shaving pieces with a razor to get exact fits. As I worked I realized the structure of the model was weak and even if I could repair the damage I caused it would still be wobbly.

I thought about how I could make it stronger and came up with the idea of using dry Popsicle sticks and toothpicks as structural supports behind the interior walls and floors I could reach because of the broken sections on the exterior walls. Since those wooden supports couldn’t be seen after the repairs were made I could glue them in the areas of greatest weakness.

Strengthening the structural elements took me an entire weekend. When I was finished I picked the model up and tried to very gently twist it. Didn’t happen. My repairs were successful. I was really pleased and felt confidence that I didn’t have before. If I could repair the interior structure I could fix the exterior. So I started working on the roof and walls.

It took another three or four weeks but a little more than two months after the disaster I brought the model back to school and asked Bro. Stein if I could see him after my last class.

He gave me a stern look and asked if I had finished working on the model. Not yet, I replied. I had hidden the model in the back of the room to be sure he wouldn’t see it. I didn’t want to tell him it was finished in case he took one look and told me I needed to repair this or that before he would accept it.

At 3:05 Bro. Stein came into my homeroom and  saw the model sitting on the teacher’s desk. Without a word he walked over and cast a critical eye on it. By that time I was standing next to him. He carefully looked it up and down, inside and out, and then asked, “Where was it broken?”

“I’m not saying,” I replied, suddenly flushed with relief. “My father said if you can’t find the repairs then I did a good job.”

Well, that was bullshit pure and simple. My father had said no such thing. But it sounded exactly right.

After going over the entire structure with a fine tooth comb he admitted that he didn’t know where the damaged area was. When I pointed it out to him he shook his head and frowned. Then I told him I had repainted the entire exterior wall and roof so you couldn’t tell the repaired areas from the undamaged ones. Now everything blended perfectly.

To tell the truth, after two months of tedious work I was proud of my efforts. It was a terrific repair job that I did all on my own, without help from my father or grandfather, who incidentally were talented carpenters. I wanted to do it myself.

When he picked the model up he immediately noticed the difference. “It feels stronger,” he said with surprise. “What did you do to it?”

“I added supports under the floors and behind the walls so it wouldn’t twist. I used dry popsicle sticks and toothpicks pasted on angles for strength. I learned that in the Boy Scouts.” Which was the truth.

He shook his head and placed the model back on top the bookcase. When he climbed down from the chair he grabbed my shoulder and shook it firmly. “I hope you learned a lesson from all this,” he said. His voice was stern but he was smiling.

“I hope so too,” was my sincere reply.

Years later, when I thought about that incident, I realized the reasons I succeeded were simple. First, I was responsible for the damage and was determined to fix it. Second, even though I was a kid I was meticulous and insisted to myself that the only way to do the job was to do it right. Doing it half-assed wasn’t an option. Which made me work long and hard. And third, I had a good eye for detail and design. Which was innate, not taught.

All in all, it went about as well as a disaster could have. Bro. Stein never said another word about the incident and neither did I. Nor did he give me a black mark on my report card for poor behavior, which I obviously deserved. It was a lesson well taught and well learned.