I know this thread is growing longer and longer like Rip Van Winkle's beard -
but I've been thinking about Cody's initial post and some afterwards and I have a story about one of my first mentors when I was a teenager. I did a search to see if I have posted this before and nothing came up.
keyword: wheel barrow
keyword: elephant dung
I think I'm safe in thinking that I have not posted this story.
My 9th grade science teacher was a woman who was in her early 50's. (I'm now older than she was at the time of this story. How about t-h-a-t!) She had a wonderful knot of hair that twisted and turned on the back of her head. It was a bun but she made it more like a Celtic knot. Because she could. I think she did it to give us a focus when she was turned to the board, writing.
I was not the most studious student or the brightest. I was average. But for some reason she saw something in me - as she did all of her students -
One day she came into the classroom with enormous bandages on both of her knees. I was very concerned because I could see seepage and knew it must be painful. When I asked, she responded that she had decided it was time to learn to ride the bicycle. It was something she had wanted to do and now was a good time. The road that she learned on was gravel and her husband had given her a wee bit too much of a push. Down she went on both knees, badly. She smiled and said she couldn't wait til the next weekend and she could try again.
We had a circus that would visit our town every spring. One day she said that she was going to the circus after school. With a smile she told me that the elephant trainers allowed her to load the elephant dung in her wheel barrow for her to take home to her garden. She had a large garden whose produce always won ribbons at the county fair. She claimed it was the elephant dung that she used in her garden each spring.
I was 15, a teenager and very shy. I had absolutely no idea how on earth I was ever going to be as creative or as funny or as charming as my science teacher but I decided she was my role model. Others have entered my life as I've grown but she was one of the major ones who has shaped and guided me all of these years and continues to. Maybe trying to be more like her when I was 15, 16, 17 - could have been seen as a stretch by my peers and adults around me. But it gave me a roadmap and a path, helping me form myself into the adult I wanted to be. I am not my science teacher but I think sometimes a glimpse of her humor pops out.