Call From the Past

So I received an extremely surprising phone call on Easter Sunday. Evidently my old 8th grade History teacher (and 7th grade Geography teacher, and he was also a gym teacher in there, too, somewhere… taught me how to actually hit a ball with a bat) was traveling cross-country with his wife, visiting family and tracking down their genealogy.

Now, let me back up a bit. I keep in touch with exactly two teachers from my school years. Okay, three, but I’m not counting my piano teacher in this particular story… he and I go back way back, to about age 7 or 8 when I first started my lessons. I’m talking about my school teachers. The first is my aforementioned Jr. High History teacher, and the second is my 9th-12th grades Music teacher in High School. Both of these men (or all three, if we’re getting technical) made a very memorable and important impact on my life, hence why I still share Christmas cards with them every year.

I’ll call my Jr. High teacher Mr. Crazy Tie, cuz he adored wearing the most outrageous ties you could imagine. He was one of those unique teachers that made learning fun. My strongest memories were of our virtual crossing of the prairie in our covered wagons… we had to prepare for our trips with a set budget, and choose which belongings to take and what to leave behind, based on the load capacity of our wagons. A different person each day got to choose a disaster out of the hat, which they then had to figure out how to deal with. (More than one person lost their wagon and all their belongings over the side of a cliff). Then, once we reached our destination, we combined in groups to create little city/states, where we elected officials and created laws to govern. We even had a trial when it looked like one of the treasurers had been embezzling money. We had a class each of 7th graders and 9th graders as the jury, and Mr. Crazy Tie was the judge. It was a blast.

And in 7th grade Geography, I remember he brought in a guest speaker who was an absolute expert on the world being flat. Not a single one of us could convince the man with solid proof that the world was, indeed round. But it was a great exercise in the use of our analytical skills. Mr. Crazy Tie was all about quirking the view on everything.

Then, of course, he was my gym teacher. As mentioned above, he somehow managed to successfully teach me how to hit a ball with a bat. But a more enduring memory is during the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot, though I never even realized exactly what he was doing until years later, he helped pace me through the entire mile, and I managed to come in first place for girls. I still have that trophy.

So yeah, Mr. Crazy Tie has a special place in my memories… a good memory during the usual heart-aches of adolescence. And in the years since, he has long since retired and visited every part of the world imaginable. I’d send my usual Christmas card, and he’d send a postcard from some exotic place. So imagine my surprise when he called out of the blue to tell me they were passing through Columbia for the night.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t horribly sure about calling him back… since I originally let the answering machine grab any calls I don’t immediately recognize. I mean, I’m not the most sociable person in the world, and what does one small-talk about to a person who was once an authority figure in one’s life? But I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t at least say hi. And Mom happened to call about something else that night, and after I told her about it, she helped encourage me to call him back.

Which I did, and I’m glad for it. I think he sensed my awkwardness, cuz he pretty much did most of the talking. It was good to talk to him, though. One new interesting fact I learned about him was that, soon after I left my Jr. High, he found out a whole bunch about his family history… mostly in the New England area. I guess his family has all kinds of connections to US history. Including the fact that some great-great-great of his was married to Paul Revere’s sister. I mean, how great is that for a History teacher? I can just imagine how even MORE interesting his classes would have been.

Anyway, the phone call was not long, and it was too late for anybody to suggest getting together for dinner or anything… which was quite likely a relief for both of us. I mean, we’re both adults, of course, and we’ve kept in touch all these years… but he’s still Mr. Crazy Tie, and I’m still an old student, albeit one he remembers fondly. It’s hard to transcend originally established relationships.

And what the hey… I won’t have any exciting trips or visits to talk about in this year’s Christmas letter, so at least I can have one person to “shout-out” to. :)