The Ultimate Pollock Joke

The Scots, I'm told, don't call themselves Scotch or Scottish. They go by Scots. But what do I know? I'm Irish.

I started teaching in my mid-twenties. By then I'd served in the Marine Corps, got married and fathered two kids, successfully sold for two companies, and had even spent a year and a half as a professional interviewer. I was full of energy and ready to take on junior high kids in Alpena, a small town in the north of Michigan.

As it turned out, the Alpena area was inhabited by many people of Polish descent --- or as the Polish joke of the early 60's went, of Polish ass-scent, alluding to both odor and evolutionary status. I'm confident the Poles lived in the area because the forty-fifth parallel of the Western Hemisphere resembled the climate of their European homeland. Cold, lots of snow, a place where cabbage and potatoes grow strong and healthy. It didn't surprise me that Thunder Bay in the 60-s was well inhabited by the descendants or ascendants of Warsaw and Xodz.

I found the Michigan Poles very special. Everyone, including themselves, called them Pollocks in an enduring way. Back then there was no such thing as politically correct, and when the Poles themselves used Pollock as naturally as someone from America might say American or

someone from Scotland would say Scot, I followed suit. One look at the Alpena phone book convinced any and all that the suffix -ski was so common that non-ski-ers felt left out. So calling a kid Ski was just as enduring as saying Pollock.

Until 1962 I'd met only one Pollock. In the Marine Corps. His name was something like Stephaniojwoilski. Being used to Jones, Smith, and Brown, I, like every other non-Pole, had two choices: call Stephaniojwoilski Ski or call him Alphabet. Remembering that, when I looked at the roster of my first class in Alpena, I burst out laughing.

"My God," I remembering saying, "you're all Ski's and Alphabets --- you'reallPollocks!" I felt like an exchange teacher who'd parachuted from downtown Tokyo into downtown Warsaw.

I knew I couldn't call them ALL Ski or Alphabet. And how in Stanislaski's name could I possibly pronounce them without looking like an illiterate foreigner? Suddenly I knew how Stephaniojwoilski must have felt as the only Pollock in the barracks.

Quickly I studied the names. And there, among all those polysyllabic tongue-twisters, was one short one. Better than that, it was Irish! Needless to say, I breathed easily knowing that the Saints had smiled on me. Instantly I fell in love with Sophie Kelly.

But it was more than love with a fellow Celt. At times I used her as a survival technique. Whenever things got rough and even my Marine Corps training couldn't pull me through, I'd turn to Kelly and talk about Dublin or Galway or the Blarney Stone or Donegal. And, when I'd gotten my feet fully under me, I'd even mention Ulster. So Sophie Kelly was the anchor that grounded me throughout the year of the Pollock flood.

As the year progressed, so did my confidence. With Kelly as my shield, I got bold enough to tell Pollock jokes in class. The kids loved them and,

sensing I needed assurance and a scapegoat, they told me every Pollock joke ever invented. I'm suspect they created a few just for the occasion. We had a romping good time paying no attention to the possibility that if an outsider, say the Principal or a parent, entered the room, I would have been fired on the spot. It was all in good fun. It was obvious that the kids enjoyed the kidding at least as much as Kelly and me.

The fun was increased by a walking Pollock joke named Dennis Kominski. After much discussion, the class decided that Dennis had an IQ of about minus fifty. Dennis was SO far gone that he really did think that Manual Labor was a Mexican, and stood poker-faced when I told him I knew a Pollock who had such a bad memory that he had to be retrained every time he came back from a coffee break.Maybehe sensed I was talking about him though I doubt it. The proof that Dennis was the ultimate Pollock was not that he was fifteen in the seventh grade but that two years later he was picked up for forgery. He'd signed a check using his father's name, the same as his, and misspelled it.

A zillion episodes occurred that memorable year, one being the teacher's greatest nightmare. Everyone knows that when you meet someone you don't get along with, the last thing you want is for something to go wrong. All year you walk a tight rope edged by a razor blade, praying all the while that harmony will prevail between the two of you. After all, everyone knows that if anything goes wrong it will be because you hate the student.

Nate Baradweszczkowski and I didn't like each other the first time we met and it got worse as the year progressed, or regressed. I'm glad I met Nate my first year of teaching because he taught me one of the great lessons every teacher must exhibit if he wants to survive/succeed: Never show how you really feel about any student. It was obvious that Baradweszczkowski hated my guts and, unfortunately, when I first met

him, that I wasn't particularly fond of him. As the year went on I learned to hide that, but the cat was out of the bag. It is teacher luck that in some respects students have short memories, so when the nightmare incident occurred I was confident that most of the kids thought I felt about Nate no more or less than anyone else in the class. Except for Sophie, of course.

So here's what happened. Nate sat in the front of the farthest row from my desk. We were studying magnetism. Everyone knows the best way to reach junior high kids, the Dennis Kominski type especially, is to give them hands-on experiences. And, of course, what better thing with magnets than let the kids play with them. On this day I didn't feel like walking all the way across the room to hand the magnets to young Mr. Baradjweszczkowski, so, against all common sense and professionalism, I tossed one to him. I rationalized that the unorthodox laboratory technique was OK because I made a long, high arc which would give Nate long enough to see it coming. Now, whether I had some subconscious stuff going on or his Polish karma was on high, I still don't know. What I do know, as did Nate and the rest of the class, is that the relatively heavy bar bounced echo-ingly off his head.

The student/victim went through a full repertoire of reactions, the first exhibit being his blood-stained wound. As it turned out, his skull --- like the skulls of all Pollocks? --- was particularly thick. And everyone knew it, because after all the drama, Baradjweszczkowski laughed saying it was nothing.

After that I praised Kelly for being the only worthy one in the class thinking that the old technique would save me. And so it went through the remainder of the year.

By the last week of school the class and I had developed an incredible rapport, had shared every Pollock and Irish joke in the book, and were

sensing that this had been a very special year for all of us. I chalked up their somewhat peculiar attitude the last few days to some part of the Polish mystique that I hadn't yet learned. I didn't grasp its full meaning until the last day of school. And what a last day!

To show how I appreciated everyone, especially his sense of humor, I painstakingly created an award for each kid. I gave Dennis Kominski the Albert Einstein Award, Nate Baradjweszczkowski the Student Most Likely To Succeed By Using His Head Award, and, of course, Sophie Kelly as the Irish Queen Award. And then, out of the clear blue, came the punch line.

The ultimate punch line. The ultimate punch line to the ultimate Pollock joke. You see, ALL YEAR these descendants/ascendants had been laughing. I thought they'd howled because of all the jokes we told. That, and the melodramatic attention I'd showered on dear Sophie because of her Irishness. For on that last day, in the very last minute before summer vacation, Kelly rose and, with the most mischievous smile I'd ever seen on any human, proudly informed me that she wasn't Irish at all. When her parents came from POLAND they'd changed their name from Kelishewski so the simple Americans could pronounce it.

There's no way of putting into words the supreme joy everyone experienced at that moment. You see, every student had been in on the joke ALL YEAR LONG. Every time I'd praised the Irish and Celtic Kelly the entire class had laughedinsidebecause the real joke was on me. To top that, I'd handled the class all year with surface, stereotypic Pollock humor, while THEY got me with a sophisticated technique --- patience. Containing themselves all year was, then, the ultimate coup.

But the joke didn't end when the students left school. There was another joke in store which turned out to be the Joke of Jokes. You see, two weeks into vacation I joined a genealogy group. The veteran researchers

had tapped into the Mormon work, the most extensive genealogical records in the world. And lo and behold, I found something that floored me and would surely have sent my Polish students into uncontrollable fits or utter silence. I learned that my great-grandfather ten generations ago had gone from Scotland to Ireland for three weeks to escape the English army. When Grandpa returned, everyone called him Scotch-Irish. And from that moment and for whatever reason, all descendants/ascendants claimed they were Irish.

It was a travesty. Calling ole Grandpa Irish was as ridiculous as saying that an African was a Swede was by blood because he flew to Stockholm for a weekend meeting.

So all the time I spent with those dear Poles in Alpena, Michigan, and the great turnabout by Kelishevski-turned-Kelly, the REAL joke was that I wasn't any more Irish than Sophie.

If that isn't the Ultimate Pollock Joke, I don't know what is. Unless you'd call it the Ultimate Irish Joke.