…was a Wilton high school science (or was it biology?) teacher named Dan Cappel. It wasn’t his teaching methods which threw me off — he was actually a very bright fellow who knew his stuff cold, and was likably mild-mannered to boot — but his voice sounded so depleted of raw energy, and he had this seemingly exhausted, baggy-eyed, beaten-down appearance.
I once spotted Dan driving his three or four kids around in a VW van, and he looked so weary and bedraggled and sleep-deprived and generally sagging at the seams. Something inside me recoiled in horror at this sight, and from that moment on I couldn’t listen to Dan. I couldn’t unsee that exhausted guy. I had decided “whatever kind of biology this guy’s selling, I can’t buy it. Because I really don’t want to be him when I get older.”
Paul Giamatti’s Paul Hunham: “I can tell by your faces that many of you are shocked at the outcome. I, on the other hand, am not because I have had the misfortune of teaching you this semester, and even with my ocular limitation I’ve witnessed first-hand your glazed, uncomprehending expressions.”
Brady Hepner’s Teddy Kountze: “Sir, I don’t understand.”
Hunham: “That‘s glaringly apparent.”
Kountze: “No, it’s…I can’t fail this class.”
Hunham: “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Kountze. I truly believe that you can.”
Kountze: “I’m supposed to go to Cornell.”
Hunham: “Unlikely.”