Where's Johnny?

Richard Cramer

doi:10.2307/375794

College English Nov 1978

Where's Johnny?

Richard Cramer

Abstract

ALL I COULD SEE in front of me was white. White walls, frozen white on the roof outside my window, icicles hanging from a nearby roof gutter like translucent chandeliers. Rows of houses filled with blank minds; people staring at blank paper trying to fill the pages with anything. To generate thoughts and transfer them to paper, an impossible task. But why? Do writing demons cloud the mind and make writing so painful? The final paper was due in a few weeks. It was to be our perfect paper. A month after handing it in we would be teaching composition to some poor kids. I had no energy to write it and nothing to write about. I disgustedly left the typewriter and sprawled out on the bed. The page was blank so I couldn't even crumple it to vent my frustration. I picked up a book of short stories by Woody Alien and begin reading about a Boston College coed who hired a detective to find out if God was dead. She needed the information for a term paper. This story gave me an idea for my own final paper. There have been many articles on why Johnny can't read or write. Why such a tremendous interest in this fellow Johnny? Just who is he? I was determined to find out and use the material in my final paper. I went back to my typewriter and began writing letters to some of the major publications in which Johnny's story had appeared. After a week of receiving no replies, I began calling the places on the phone. Everyone I spoke with laughed at me. I called the FBI but the most I could get from them was, No comment. At this point I began to suspect conspiracy. There was no logical reason unless the government was now getting into conspiracy as an art form. Conspiracy for conspiracy's sake. One kid could not have any noticeable effect on the national average for standardized tests. My investigation had reached a dead end until one day I looked at a book titled Current Topics in Language (Nancy Ainsworth Johnson, ed.: Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop, 1976) and came upon an article entitled Juanito's Reading Problems: Foreign Language Interference and Reading Skill Acquisition, by Nancy Modiano. So the plot thickened; either Johnny was using an alias, or matters had been complicated by a new person (or should I say persona) entering the scene. Going on the assumption that Johnny and Juanito were one and the same, I hired a detective to find him. All we had to go on was his name and the fact that he supposedly couldn't read or write. The detective tramped around the Midwest through the snow, made numerous phone calls, and followed around certain literary editors. After two weeks the situation seemed hopeless and I could no longer afford her fees, that is, if I was to pay the next semester's tuition. It was at the back of

Journal: College English
Published: 1978-11-01
DOI: 10.2307/375794
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Open Access: Closed
Topics: teacher development multilingual writers literary studies
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Where's Johnny?

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