God's Sense of Humor

God has a sense of humor. I am living proof of that. When I was a teenager in high school I hated school. There was nothing about it that I liked. I wanted it to be over and four long years of high school later it was. Those four years took an eternity. People used to tell me....you will miss it when it is over....don't wish your life away....but wish I did...and 30+ years later I still don't miss it. My high school years were not good ones. I had friends, but they went to my church. We had a blast together. I never missed a service at church. I lived for Weds. and Sundays. I can't really remember but a couple of teachers during my high school years that made school fun. One was my art teacher and the other was my 10th grade English teacher Mr. Trotsky. He was the only teacher I ever had that sat on the desk to teach....and had us explicate lyrics to popular songs in the poetry unit of Literature. Fool on Hill will always stand out in my mind. Our school was desegregated during my tenure there and that was scary. Life was scary during those years. I went to school during the Vietnam war and it was a frightening time. Boys I knew were drafted and some of them never came back. When you lose a friend to war at the age of 18 it is unsettling. I went to college after graduation....because that is what you did. Neither of my parents had even finished high school....so I wanted to be the first. In college....I met someone who would change my life. His name was Watson B. Duncan III and he taught Literature. I mean....he TAUGHT literature. For the hour I was in his class...the world of the mundane ceased to exist. If first impressions were all there was....I would have missed out on this great man. My first visions of him were of a white-haired tackily dressed man. But when the curtains parted....and there are was a pink bunny on stage and he did the day's recitation of Othello. I have to say it was hard to think of Othello as boring with a huge pink Easter bunny parading on stage quoting lines from Othello. At the end of Act I Scene I he stopped, took off the bunny head, sat down on the stage and we discussed what we had just heard. We had all paid attention. We had all learned. I loved everything about this class. He made Shakespeare, Othello, Falstaff, Cervantes all come to life right before my eyes. He taught us that it is all in the presentation and I guess it was. I took every class he offered. I wish he were alive today. I have so much I would like to say to him. I can imagine him talking in heaven with Shakespeare or God in the bunny suit he wore that first day of class. So back to God's sense of humor...funny things happen. I teach high school. I sentenced myself to a life of being in the place I hated the most when I was 15. The humor in it is that I love being here. I love the smell of the place, I love the kids, I love the people I work with. I love getting up every morning and coming here before anyone else gets here.....(with the exception of Gail....she is always here). I have to ask myself now as I enter my final years of this profession....'Will anyone remember my own antics when I am gone?" "Will some student write a blog about me....in a favorable sense 30+ years after they had me?" Dr. Duncan's favorite quote was, "I teach, therefore I act." He did just that....act...and I did learn. He knew what the expression, "Seize the day!" was all about. I wish I could look at him and say "Thank You," to this great man. But you know....I think somehow he already knows....and he is smiling! Carpe Diem all! Carpe Diem! K