To Her with Love

This is from our annual Christmas family newsletter. My clever husband wrote it as if it is a review of a television show based on my supposedly dramatic life.


The premise of the ABC original was basically Green Acres in reverse. Take a big time successful corporate lawyer and move her not to the country but to the inner city as a high school social studies teacher. The trouble is, after four years it is a little hard to buy the idea that a person would put up with the aggravation, not to mention the loss of income, if it was still an impossible struggle.


Credit the series with allowing Jane Erdenberger’s character to mature from an Oliver Douglas cocky naivete to a genuinely skilled educator. Now we see a teacher who is the master of the classroom no matter what students throw at her. In one episode, Jane discovers that a confiscated cell phone’s wallpaper displays a self-portrait of the young man’s naked manhood. Without a beat she quips, “You must have taken this from a long ways away.” Now we see a teacher who is having fun and making a difference in students’ lives. In a bit of slapstick she and a robust gym teacher lash legs for a pep rally 3-legged race. After two NASCAR-worthy wipeouts, the resulting scrapes and bruises give her a House-like hobble for three episodes. As one student tells another teacher, “You gotta love that lady!”


Having mastered her relationship with her students, the drama now moves outside the classroom. Peeved that the school system does not recognized her J.D. as an advanced degree, Jane decides to get even by pursuing an M.A. in Poli Sci. It is a chance to remind her character what a classroom is like from the other side of the desk and that a student might just have other priorities than the 40 page paper that is due on Tuesday. Needless to say, in the end she gets straight A’s.


In a dramatic storyline, the mother of a failing student makes a serious charge against Jane of racial bias. The accommodating and community-minded principal responds by moving the daughter to another class and refusing Jane a forum with the parent. Prudence and friends tell Jane to drop the matter but she asks, “If she had accused me of molesting her daughter would moving her be acceptable? If I am a racist, why am I still in the classroom?” The unresolved storyline ends with a letter to her union lawyer requesting a formal defense.


Brilliantly, with Jane comfortably and completely committed to her new life, the series seemed to have dropped the whole issue of giving up her former career. But in the final scene of the season, Jane returns to her old law firm for some after-hours photocopying. The office is newly remodeled to tasteful perfection. It now seems a wonderland of marble, leather and modern art masterpieces. As she marvels at the solid oak stalls of the women’s lounge and thinks about the school restroom she shares with 800 teenage girls, it is clear she is questioning, "Did I make the right decision?”