| Since then:
The following note was provided
by "Chuck" Roberts through Miranda Kenrick (1965)
who, as it turns out, lives in the same neighborhood in
Tokyo.
It's been some forty years, but I'm quite sure I was the
guy (I should say the "Dean of Students") who collected
those Volkswagen wheels — at the request of the dads — to keep two young delinquents from careening up and
down Omotesando at midnight while their parents were out of
the country. I must have triumphantly marched off with one
tire under each arm and proudly stacked them on my desk at
ASIJ (does anyone remember seeing them there?): other
potential delinquents summoned to my office would surely get
the message. (I tried, in those Days of Terror, to be
unambiguous.) Such activities, however, did not get me hired
as the Tokyo representative for Firestone. Instead I went on
to Meiji Gakuin University to teach English; then to Waseda;
then to Sophia University to teach Methods of Teaching and
Delinquency in the Secondary School ( or Basic
Wheel-snatching Skills for School Administrators); and
finally to Nihon University.
I've retired from all these universities, gracefully
leaving most of them because of age — and not because of
some unnatural zeal for stealing tires! I'm still at Nihon
University, on a full schedule and enjoying myself
thoroughly.
The theme of my teaching — all these forty years —
has been to stay away from diphthongs and gerunds and to
hold to the concept that English can be as exciting as a
murder mystery; and can also provide at least one basic
skill for our earthly survival — how to understand others.
Hollywood has helped me in this with movies I could adapt
for classroom use. These include "Summer of my German
Soldier" (understanding the enemy); "The
Apostle" (getting away from religious stereotypes);
"A Time to Kill" (understanding black Americans);
"Frankie and Johnny" (male and female
relationship); and "Mrs. Doubtfire" (understanding parents). It has
been a fun forty years and time never goes so fast as when
I'm teaching. This is a rare blessing — when one's job and
one's daily satisfaction go hand in hand — a blessing I
ardently hope for my own son and for all working men and
women.
If I had to do these forty years over again, I wouldn't
change very much.
I'd still marry the same spunky Tokyoite again. I'd still
enjoy living beyond the conformities of society (I'm
tolerated in Japan and not missed in America.) And I have
had the unusual advantage of seeing my own country from the
outside, seeing it from an international perspective. As an
American from afar, I can be inspired by its
accomplishments, dismayed by its mistakes, but sorrowed by
its calamities as a young NYU graduate might have been so
many Septembers ago.
Oh yes, I might change one thing: I'd probably grab all
four of those VW tires and the spare, just to make sure that
my message did get across!
Charles "Chuck" Roberts
November 1, 2001
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