Mr Kaplan changed my life without ever knowing it. Isn't that the way with teachers, that they are often unaware of the best gifts they give? Somewhere between roll call and the homework assignment, magic occasionally happens. Don't ask me why. I'm just glad it does.

The first day of seventh grade had already been full of surprises, most of them in sevens. Seven periods. Seven different teachers – seven different people to pelt with questions, what an opportunity for a pest like me. Then there was the principal, who was only about seven times bigger than anyone I'd ever seen before. Who hinted at the mysteries of Growing Up. Who stood there in the auditorium in all his robust dignity and solemnly informed 700 baffled 12-year-olds that they were now required – required, mind you – to purchase and use deodorant. Noblesse oblige, or some such. It was a day for revelations.

One of the best of these was Mr Kaplan, our World History teacher. World history. We were going to... what? Find out the origin of the universe? The ultimate answer? Perhaps, even, the ultimate question? I faced this prospect with mingled delight and trepidation. Was I ready for high seriousness?

I knew that World History as a subject of conversation was somehow, fraught, as they now say. Fraught with what exactly, I was not sure. But there was the Incident in fourth grade, the one I was determined never to repeat. I never again wanted to cause a grown woman to turn as pale as Mrs Newton had the day I asked her, in all innocence, where the dinosaurs in my book fit into the first three chapters of Genesis (which I took for Holy Writ, as of course they were). I thought the poor woman would faint dead away before she gave me some sort of answer and sent me back to my desk.

I had never heard of William Jennings Bryan, or Mr Scopes, or the Monkey Trial, nor did I know that in Tennessee it was still illegal to teach the Theory of Evolution. I would never, ever have ratted Mrs Newton out to the Inquisition. She knew everything, she was beautiful and had a husband who worked in the tallest building in Memphis (which wasn't saying much, but still) – and I worshipped the ground her high heels trod upon. She could have told me the dinosaurs had come from Mercury aboard a comet, and I would have believed her.

How do you know they didn't? Beware intellectual pretension, my friend.

But World History... and in Pennsylvania, the enlightened Quaker State, free of the Scopes Law... what mysteries would now be revealed? I leaned forward in my plastic chair, elbows on the cheap desk, and studied our new Vergil.

To my intense delight, Mr Kaplan looked and sounded like Mr Magoo, that charmingly nearsighted cartoon character with the bulbous nose who blundered his way through perils unseen, always emerging miraculously unscathed. His bald head boasted a few wispy tufts of hair, and his chuckle – just like Mr Magoo's – was kind and avuncular. Unlike Mr Magoo, his vision was good - in fact, it was better than good. He saw things others didn't.

Mr Magoo – er, Kaplan – announced that we were going to study the History of the World. We held our collective breath (all except Mickey O'Rourke, in the back row, who was writing a note to Debby Wilkomirski, but Mickey was sort of advanced). And then came the First Question:

'Does anybody know where the Garden of Eden was?'

There was general Presbyterian puzzlement, while the Catholics wondered if that was in the Catechism. I, of course, sprang into action with Baptist zeal, and before I could repent of my folly, my hand shot up eagerly.

(I had no business answering questions on the first day of school in a new country – er, state. With a name like Dmitri Gheorgheni I had enough trouble, and the shiny wasn't off my Confederate pardon yet. Besides, when I talked I sounded like that kid in the awful television commercial: 'It was Shake'n'Bake, an' Ah he-yepled.' Nevertheless, answer I did, and somehow managed to make comprehensible sounds.)

'The Tigris and Euphrates Valley, sir.' After all, I did know where the Garden of Eden was located – at least according to King James I.

Mr Kaplan beamed at me. 'That's right! You see, you know more about World History than you thought.' He then proceeded to show us a map and explain about the Fertile Crescent, and hunter-gatherers, and then...

Sent us home with an assignment: Make a Tool. From scratch. Using what you could find at home, in your backyard. Pretend to be a hunter-gatherer. Hunt and gather. Use nature.

I ran home in a panic. I knew it. I wasn't cut out for World History. It was a privileged subject for Yankees with old estates. This was going to be a disaster.

Greeting my mother and putting away my books, I headed outside to survey my family's piece of nature.

There, as far as the eye could see... I lie. You could see far beyond our quarter-acre on a hillside, past rows and rows of newly-built houses, not a fence or a decent hedgerow in the 'development', nothing but boxy houses with awkwardly-placed macadamed driveways. Some evergreen bushes to hide the nakedness of new brick, a few late flowers planted hopefully by my mother, two – two! – three-year-old elm trees in the front yard, their scanty leaves already yellowing in the early September weather. What self-respecting hunter-gatherer had ever been confronted with such a pitiful scene as this? They'd have starved. We would never have been born.

I trudged down the steep driveway, around to the back, where there was one more pathetic little tree, and scuffed at the dry ground with the toe of a sneaker. What was this? A rock? Didn't Mr Kaplan say they banged the rocks together? Doh, that's probably why it was called the Stone Age. I picked up stones. I banged stones. I sat making a great pile of stones and trying to chip arrowheads for all I was worth.

And gave up in despair. The Stone Age people could not have come to Pittsburgh. Never. Shale just breaks off in layers – flat, thin ones, what was this good for? I didn't have an answer, didn't even have a decent question.

I thought, this is unfair. I bet it took those old Stone Age people a long while to figure out how to make arrowheads. How can I do it by bedtime?

Clearly, seventh grade was more of a challenge than I first thought. Sighing, I abandoned stone chiselling to make my way back up the hill on the other side of the house to the kitchen door, passing as I did the juvenile sassafras by the steps. I broke off a small branch and sat inside, pulling off strips of supple bark... supple... bark... I grinned and wheedled my mother.

'Mama, what are we having for supper?'

'Fried chicken.' (No, this is no time to think of the hated Shake'n'Bake commercial. Forge ahead.)

'Can you save me the bones, please, ma'am?'

A puzzled shrug. 'I guess so. What do you want bones for?' (Warranted suspicion.)

'School. We've gotta make a tool' (Not a word about the Fertile Crescent. Who knows? It might conflict with Deuteronomy.)

Thus it was that I arrived in Mr Kaplan's class the next day, armed with the world's smallest hammer – the handle made of a sassafras stick, the bark used to tie on the largest, what? knuckle? from a chicken bone... do chickens even have knuckles?

I was deeply ashamed of this artefact. With it, I felt, I had disgraced the noble legacy of Man the Toolmaker. Still, I had never in my life failed to turn in a homework assignment. I supposed some convoluted sense of honour was at stake.

To my astonishment, Mr Kaplan was most complimentary. 'That's the idea. Use what you have. That's a good tool.' My gratitude at what I perceived as his undeserved generosity was overwhelming. I was ready for the next challenge, maybe building an ark out of aluminium siding.

On Mr Kaplan took us, in his inimitable way, through the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans... we got bogged down in the Roman Empire, and never got out of there. Mr Kaplan adored the Romans, especially their armour.

Mr Kaplan's knowledge of Roman history was derived from a deep understanding of the films of Cinecitta. Those exciting, insightful Italian movies, full of robust heroes with olive oil on their bulging muscles and lovely, gracious women, women who had mastered the art of breathing at the camera... pant, pant... (I worried about their respiratory systems until I got a little older).

Mr Kaplan spent every Saturday afternoon at the Bijou in nearby Millvale, where his only complaint was that certain badly-brought-up young men threw popcorn at the screen. He regaled us with history drawn from Steve Reeves films. I recognized the plots: my little sister had a precocious interest in these fellows, and had forced me to sit through 'Revenge of the Barbarians' four times.

There was much of blood and glory, little of Cicero in Mr Kaplan's Rome. But we were the better for it. This was Life.

Somehow we survived our teachers, and they survived us, and we went on to life or college, whichever came first. I even became a mediaevalist.

Many years later, when I stood among the archaeological remains of the Dacian fortress of Sarmegetusa, I thought of Mr Kaplan, and wondered what he would have said to the reduction of the glory of Trajan's victory to this well-ordered dig. He might have been disappointed. But my Romanian guides had a further surprise in order for me.

According to the good professors at the University of Cluj-Napoca, historians had collaborated with a renowned director to make an accurate film showing the fall of the chieftain Decebal and the Roman triumph. Every effort had been taken to make this film vivid and historically correct. We settled in to enjoy.

And there they were: the warriors with their gleaming muscles, the women with their heaving bosoms. The rich reds, the shining brass, the loud, woefully misnamed 'background' music: the film had been made by a French company, true, but it had been made – in the spirit of Cinecitta. And yes, there were wristwatches visible on the extras.

I could have wept for joy.

Mr Kaplan, wherever you go in this life or the next, I hope there is always a Bijou on Saturday afternoons. And that nobody has the nerve to throw popcorn at the screen.

Oh. And how did Mr Kaplan change my life? By teaching me this lesson: use what is at hand, however poor it may seem. And never, ever, despise the value of a good imagination.

Even a hunter-gatherer would approve of that sentiment, I'll bet.

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