Since I can write this, I thank a teacher

If I can write this and you can read this, thank a teacher.

Teachers. My memory of them begins when we moved to the Heights.

Mrs. Parr in fourth grade at Auburn Heights Elementary who assigned leaf collections at the beginning of every fall. Caroline Street alone, plus the sassafras patch in the First Woods, gave us a guaranteed A+--sour cherry, catalpa, apple, banana cherry, pickling and Bartlett pears, box elder, sugar maple, silver maple, oak, black cherry, weeping willow…all carefully ironed between waxed paper and taped to notebook paper.

She also guaranteed that I memorized the multiplication tables from 0x0 to 12x12 by assigning them handwritten 100 times each as homework.

The unknown (to me) music teacher who came to her room once a week for tonette lessons. You remember those black plastic recorders. What a hero to stand in front of our eager class and pretend to be pleased by that screeching din which gave us such pleasure.

Mrs. Love in fifth grade at Stone School who informed me that I’d never amount to anything because I read too much.

Junior high produced a teacher for each subject. We all had the teacher there or in high school who threw things at mouthy or sleeping students.

Mr. Strayer in science who demonstrated the Doppler effect by leaving the classroom to stand at the end of the second-floor hallway, race up the hall hollering, in and out the science room doors, and to the far end of the hallway. We clearly heard the change in pitch as he rushed by. A simple description of a passing train would have been simpler, but not so memorable.

Mr. Welty, my first teacher crush, for two years’ Spanish. And our one year of Latin—was it ever offered again? —with Mr. Antista. He taught with enthusiasm, his forehead crinkled as his eyebrows rose and stayed high. We’d snigger at each other for doing the same thing, but touching our own foreheads, realized it was impossible not to imitate. Remember the song, “There she was just a-walkin’ down the street, singin’ ‘Doo wah diddy, diddy dum, diddy doo…’”? I will forever remember the Latin for the words we sang to the melody, “There she was just a-walkin’ down the street singin’ ‘Ubi ubi est mea sub ubi’—Where where is my under where. The height of wit at that time, thank you, Mr. Antista.

Everybody loved Mr. Parrott. He knew and remembered every student, and not only us, but who we married and who our kids were. Amazing man.

So many teachers whose names slip past me. The high school English teacher who taught me to love writing poetry. The physics teacher who finally pitied me enough to pass me instead of giving me the grade I deserved. The junior high chemistry teacher, gorgeous and passionate about a subject that eluded me then.

I know you could tell me plenty of stories about your favorites (and not so), and I’d love to hear them. They’d trigger memories and names of those who deserve to be remembered.

And this was just Avondale.

As my instructor at Lawrence Tech beamed at us when explaining a difficult concept in AC circuits, “Now, wasn’t that worth getting up in the morning for?”

Yes, Ken, it was.