How to lose friends and influence nobody
If you're a Hollywood director, you'll know that a "teacher" is someone who stalks about the timbered end of a classroom, firing off Socratic questions and pertinent facts, a tall ship in the centre of a small inland sea of rapt attention. Girls prop their chins on their hands and gaze adoringly at him ( sic ). Behind him, waves of untidy equations rise and fall on a seasick blackboard. At some point, this "teacher" may instruct students to rip up a book or stand on a desk: querulously or with alacrity, it shall be done . And of course, years later, he'll be remembered with a mixture of amused affection and reverence. This blameless, worthy soul, dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, will have "changed lives" almost in spite of himself. Friendship, maybe not so much, but influence, well, he's practically got the patent on it. I am not this "teacher". I don't know whether he really exists. Perhaps he does. I...