Teaching Little Miss Opie
Always mind what you say — you never know who’s in your audience.
Back in the mid-’90s, I taught creative writing at Vassar College for the Summer Institute for the Gifted. The students were precocious middle schoolers whose parents had dropped a bundle for a couple weeks of learning. My job was to impart my love of metaphor, description and iambic pentameter — all of which, as an English major, I truly adore.
One afternoon, I launched into a soliloquy about plot, explaining that every protagonist has to overcome an obstacle. The obstacle creates tension, driving the story to its end.
Needing an illustration, I used Apollo 13, which had just played in theaters. On the blackboard, I drew an Earth and Moon and small spaceship with flames and explained the obstacle of the crew’s dwindling oxygen. The kids really connected, interjecting ideas and answering my questions.
After the class filed out, a camp assistant who’d sat in came up front.
“That was great,” she said. “Did you see Bryce giggling while you were talking about Apollo 13?”
Bryce was a red-haired girl with piercing eyes, sort of a female Opie if you remember The Andy Griffith Show. That should have been a clue.
“No,” I said. “Why would she find it funny?”
“Well,” the RA said, “her dad directed that movie — you know, Ron Howard.”
Ah, yes. I connected her name in my head: Bryce Howard. If you’re a film fan, you know her today by her stage name, Bryce Dallas Howard.
