Wednesday, July 06, 2005



All this school talk and thinking has me thinking about so many different things.
I remember some of the weirdest things.
Like teachers.
They play such an important part in your life and some you remember some she should have never met.
I will never forget Mr. Young.
He was exactly that, young, when he first started working in my Junior High. I think he was the English teacher. I do know that he was very good looking and all the girls had a huge crush on him.
I will never forget the total shock when one night while working at the Nightclub he came in with a group of friends just plastered and still cute. He comes flying in through the door, turns and looks at me,
-I REMEMBER YOU!!!! You are Andrea!! You were in my English class. You had the biggest crush on me!!!!!
(Exclamation marks indicate how loud he was yelling)
Then goes flying into the bar to party more. I stood there with this total look of shock on my face.
Then there was the gym teacher Miss, something. I dont know why I cant remember her name. She was short and perky and nice.
We used to co- own a summer cabin up at the lake. Turns out she lived up there and was a friend of our co-owning friends. When we finally kicked out the renters who were in there before we bought we all had a heart attack at how dirty this place was. The only way to remedy this was to have a cleaning party involving lots of alcohol. I was only 16 at the time and was allowed one beer. To my horror, while drinking this beer I turned around and there was my PE teacher. She yelled
-HEY!!
Grabs a beer, cracks it open, swigs back almost half in one gulp
-I am cleaning the fridge!!!
Never in my life had I ever heard anyone actually offer to clean a fridge.

Then there was my English/Lit teacher who had the biggest crush on Mel Gibson and arranged for our class to go to the cinema in the middle of the day so we could all watch him play Hamlet. I loved her. Gotta love someone with a horse named Daisy who draws Shaksperian Dashunds on the chalkboard so that you understand 'The Tempest'.
My Western Civilizations teacher made me love history the way history should be loved; not dates by memories. He went to a Catholic school with real monks when he was a kid. He had this mystery air around him along with an accent. He would chant to himself and rock back n forth while waiting for us to settle. He made us drop 25cents into the jar if we needed to leave the classroom for anything rather then put up our hand and disturb him. I remember Cheri C. successfully debating her 25cents back from him because she had to leave to get a drink due to coughing. Her argument was that her coughing was about to disrupt the class so she had to leave out of necessity. At the end of the year all that money was donated to Unicef or the RedCross.
There was the little Social something or other teacher who walked like Charlie Chaplin and drove the most beautiful old car. I saw him at the gym a few years after graduating. He was so excited when I said I was thinking of being a teacher that he offered to sign what ever papers necessary so that I could be his teacher assistant for training.

Then there are the amazing students that stick out in my mind.
During Elementary one of our students was this beautiful blind girl. I used to walk with her a lunch. She once asked me to describe this one boy to her because she really liked him. He was fat and had acne already. But she had this huge crush on him because he had a nice voice and was kind to her. She taught me how to see the inside of people first and not judge looks.
In Senior High there was this one boy in a wheelchair. I used to be in awe at him. I thought he was the most amazing person I had ever met. He was incredibly smart and did tons of sports. I saw him once flying down the street in this special bicycle thing where he peddled leaning forward using his hands. I realized then the only thing holding me back was me.
Shortly after, I met this girl who used my horse as a backdrop for a TV interview (because he was the coolest horse in the world). She was about 90% blind (she could see slight shadows) and almost totally deaf. She could ride horses, even jump, and she skied. While watching her I realized I was not as good of a rider as I thought and no where near as strong.
In my grade 12 year we had a mature student. She was a mother of two and was in probably her early 40s. I was pretty proud of her when she collected her diploma. Her kids were sitting in the front with the biggest smiles on their faces.
We had another mature student that year. This guy was only about 20 though. He was beautiful; tall, slim dark and handsome in that mysterious way. He was in my ceramics class and went about it with a silent passion. He was also in my Western civilizations class. I could never understand why teachers would rip off everyone's hide for nodding off in class but they left him alone. One day he totally passed out and his head came flying down towards the desk top with full force. It sent his books flying across the room. The teacher didnt get mad and we all tried not to laugh too hard. After we got our year end grad books I discovered that this guy was a single father who had fought with his ex-girlfriends parents for custody of a child that she didnt want. He won and was trying to finish school, raise his kid and work all at the same time. He posed for school photos with his son on his lap and a proud smile on his face. I saw them quite by fluke some years later at a horsey friends wedding. He turned out to be the grooms best man.

There have been tons of different people who have influenced my life in one way or the other. These are just a few.
I have family members who have been guiding lights, famous people who have been inspirations, casual passing of people on the street who have stayed in my mind for one reason or the other. I am still very much Andrea from the past but I look at the world so differently now.
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Posted by (Top)Andrea::7/06/2005 :: 1 Comments:

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