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| Scott Dutton at The 602 Club, April 2015, Appleton |
The first time I met Scott Dutton, a fellow teacher at Renaissance School for the Arts, I picked him up at his
charming brick house, along with his drums.
When the students came to happiness class that afternoon, I told them
how excited I was because the drum circle was going to be so fun. Scott leaned on his drum and growled to the
students, “Whenever someone tells me I’m going to have fun, that pretty much
guarantees that I won’t.”
Scott was confrontational and challenging. He loved drama, and I didn’t, adding to his
fun. I was the new writing teacher,
hired because he had quit, though not because he didn’t want to teach, but only
to prove a point.
I was struggling, trying to figure out how to critique the
students’ writings. Scott asked me
pointedly, “But do you love them?” And it
freaked me out and got into my head, and I ended up not talking to him again
for a year.
Later, when we became friends again, I referred to it, and he
said, “You didn’t talk to me for a whole year?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because you asked me if I love the students.” We laughed about that for a long time.
When Scott laughed, which was often, he laughed with his
whole soul.
“I used to be a really big guy,” he once told me, because I
only knew him as a stooped ill man, nearly coming to his end one afternoon walking
from his car to my house. He stood in my
living room with his arms held open and his chest lifted to the sky. “This is how I get it going again,” he wheezed
about his temperamental heart.
Scott was not afraid of dying.
Nothing meant more to him than his students.
The craziest conspiracy theory he ever told me was that our
DNA is actually the invention of aliens who are breeding us and harvesting our
energy. “You mean, you don’t know that’s
true?” he asked, concerned for my mental wellbeing.
He gave me the courage to be a more honest and open
teacher. And for that I will always be grateful.
Whenever I think of Scott, I feel like celebrating.
