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At a very early age, it was obvious; Robert Anderson wasn’t good school material. His grade one teacher used a ping-pong pallet to coax him to read. His first of two grade two teachers used a yardstick with the same intension. Neither worked. Robert failed grade two and three.
His grade eight principal told him, “Don’t waste your time. Liberal Arts is not for you. You’ll never graduate from high school, let alone university.” Robert proved him wrong, but not until he jumped a few difficult hurdles.
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Later, when asked to write book reports, he created his own stories in his head and wrote about them. His teachers marked his bad spelling and poor penmanship, ignoring that he had never read the books. Their actions only strengthened his belief that school was “stupid” and not worth the effort.
Robert’s mother decided to help him with his spelling, by testing him, daily. Every Monday evening, he had to write every word he got wrong ten times, twenty times on Tuesday, and so on, up to fifty times on Friday. When given a test on fifty words next Monday -- two points were taken off for each error -- it was not unusual for Robert’s spelling quiz at school to have minus 100 scrawled across the top.
“If I don’t try,” he thought. “I can’t fail.”
Surprisingly, elementary school was not all bad. His third grade teacher, the second time around, did not focus on his reading problems. She focused on his strengths. Realizing how much he loved to sing, she encouraged him to join the glee club.
“We need a boy with a good voice,” she said. Robert had never heard anything said good about him, except by his mother. He was amazed by his teacher's compliment and was hooked.
Usually, Robert struggled with memorization. But he loved singing, whereas, the other boys did not. While they never tried, Robert put his heart into it, memorizing song after song, slowly but surely.
He never could match the girls, but often outshone the boys. That’s all that mattered. Sometimes, he was invited to sing solo, spurring him on to work harder. It took years for him to realize the gift his glee club teacher had given him.
One night when in grade seven, he had an incredible and vivid dream that changed his life.
Robert dreamt he was a writer. The next morning, he awoke realizing that things could not stay as they were. In the weeks to follow, he also realized that the survival methods that had protected him for so long had turned into a brick wall. If he wished to be a writer, he had to learn how to read and to do so, he had to tear that brick wall down.
It was far from easy to break bad habits. And his was a silent and lonely journey. For the most part, he had to keep his dream to himself, fearing ridicule from others.
Two more adults came to his rescue.
First was a high school English teacher who, as it were, took Robert under her wing. Once a week for a year, she invited him into her home. While her husband read the newspaper in the kitchen, she and Robert sat in the living room reading Shakespeare to one another while listening to Elizabethan music. He had never heard anything so beautiful as the music or Shakespeare.
Surprisingly, the second was a man with a grade-two education. During the summer of Robert’s sixteenth year, he worked as a laborer for a construction company. One day, he was told to spread and level a truckload of gravel in the basement of a house under construction.
As far as I know, portable toilets were not used in Hamilton, Ontario back in the mid sixties. Workers in home construction often took care of their toilet needs in the gravel of an unfinished basement, burying their business afterward. As a result, Robert’s nostrils were in for a shock.
He was a studious young man and determined to finish the job. But the odor was horrendous. Robert’s solution was to write a poem in his head. All daylong he edited and re-edited his poem, to keep his mind of the smell that otherwise would have turned his stomach.
At the end of the day, the foreman drove the two of them home, a fifty-mile trip from Hamilton back to Burlington, Ontario. Not wanting to forget his poem, Robert scribbled it down on the back of an old envelope he had found on the floor of the company van.
“What are you writing?” asked the foreman.
“Nothing,” said Robert, suddenly realizing that he had been caught writing a poem. He wanted nothing more than to melt into the glass of the passenger door and disappear.
A battle of wills quickly ensued between Robert and the foreman. Finally, the latter pulled to the side of the highway and teased him.
“Read it, or we stay put.”
Starving to get home and have a snack, Robert grudgingly gave in and read his poem, "The Workman's Latrine".
Down in the bowels of a newly built house,
The odor is mellow and pure:
‘Tis the place where the workmen go down for a rest,
To the workman's latrine and a cure.
Empty cement bags all in a row,
Each man to choose from the best.
But one thing is missed that you do get at home:
Pink paper with flowers and zest.
"How many poems have you written?" said the foreman.
“One. Just one," he said expecting the foreman to tell him it was the worst poem he had ever heard.
“Congratulations!" came the reply, “Really! Congratulations! I’m not an educated man, but I read a lot, and love poetry. Your little poem -- as simple as it is -- is amazing. The balance: the marriage of rhythm, rhyme, and meaning . . . ”
“Perfect,” he continued. “I’m sorry for rambling. I’ve never met a poet before, and I’ll tell you, son, it’s a pleasure to know you.” Then off they went down the highway.
Funny thing, the foreman had never talked to Robert very much until that day.
Once again, Robert was shocked by the praise of another; making him more determined than ever to follow his dream of becoming a writer.
Following his dream was not easy. He still struggled at school. He studied hard, the only way he knew how, studying by rote. But no matter how hard he tried, everything seemed to go in one ear and out the other. He had still not discovered the wonders of reading in phrases, but battled on, one word at a time.
It took years before he understood how he was able to write that first poem. Two things had been in his favour, the efforts of his glee club teacher who encouraged him to sing and the high school English teacher who introduced him to Shakespeare.
Memorizing the number of songs he had sung in glee club, and later in a church choir, helped Robert to learn grammar and syntax, as if through osmosis. And although Shakespeare was far beyond his true understanding, he loved the cadence of the lines and the music of the words, so never put Shakespeare down.
In spite of his efforts, completing high school looked like a complete impossibility, but finally he did graduate, if only just.
Robert did poorly on his university entrance exams, many of the questions made no sense to him. And he was terrified to major in English, afraid that his poor reading and writing skills would make him a laughing stock. So he decided to study theatre and find his way to a writing career through the stage door.
Once again, he was lucky to find a mentor. The Head of the Theatre Department at Virginia Commonwealth University invited him to Richmond, Virginia for an interview. Once the interview was over, he smiled.
“Young man, I cannot imagine how you will be able to complete university,” he said. “But you have gumption, a good work ethic, and a marvelous imagination. It will take lots of hard work. But getting to know you, I believe you will succeed. Welcome to university. Good luck.”
The work ahead was harder than either had expected. But in the end, Robert graduated in good standing, with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Theatre. He almost went on to earn a Masters Degree, also in Theatre. But even after years and years of study, his skills at writing an essay, let alone a Masters thesis, were almost nonexistent.
It took Robert another fifteen years of self-study before he started to understand the finer intricacies of writing and another fifteen before beginning to receive Honorary Mention in national and international writing completions, for his stories, songs, and poems.
In 2001, Robert went back to school to become an ESL tutor so as to support his writing habit. Once again, his poor memory haunted him, so he asked to have his memory checked. After sixteen hours of testing, it was concluded that he has a 55-percentile short memory capacity.
To complicate matters, after years of abuse from many friends and teachers who simply did not understand that his poor memory had nothing to do with laziness, he often felt traumatized by anything that had to do with memorization. No wonder he had to struggle so hard and for so long to get where he is today.
Becoming an ESL tutor was a godsend. Teaching young people how to write for over 14 years has added greatly improved his own writing.
The only thing that bothers Robert today is that he has never been able to thank, in a way that they deserve, those special people who mentored him, and for the gift of reading and writing that they have given him over the years. But he is proud to follow in their footsteps and to mentor other struggling readers and writers, by introducing them to the play of his own stories, songs, and poems.
I know this story very well. You may know me as Robert Stelmach, but I was born Robert Roland Anderson, before my mother remarried, and long before I changed my name to Max Tell. This is my true story.
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