Hydro-Phobia

This summer, in an attempt to get some exercise while still not having to deal with the Texas heat, I’ve been going to water aerobics at the YMCA. It’s a good way to work on strength and flexibility without putting undue stress on my weak knees and ankles.   

Those who know me will tell you that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an athlete, despite my brief involvement in jogging for a few years back when I was in my late 20s and early 30s. I didn’t have any speed then, but I had a lot of endurance, so I ran in several 10K races, all with the specific goal of finishing without getting hurt. And I accomplished that at the blazing speed of 12 to 13 minutes per mile. In other words, only just slightly faster than a walking pace.

I also might mention here that I am not a swimmer, unless you count a weak dog paddle (that looks more like a drowning dog—lots of splashing around and very little forward movement). As a small child on a trip to a local creek to “swim” with my parents, I managed to step into a hole where the water went over my head until Daddy pulled me out. That experience made me fearful of water. Around the time I started first grade, my parents signed me up for swimming lessons, and I did learn to float on my back, as well as face down for as long as I could hold my breath. But when it actually came to swimming, I could never overcome my fear of the water for more than a few strokes. That doesn’t mean that I stayed in the shallow end of the pool during my adolescent years. No, I went all around the pool, everywhere I could go and still be within an arms length of the side of the pool.

As an adult, I had two scary experiences on water, each involving a canoe. I took a relaxing trip down a river with another teacher and some of our students that ended with one short section of rapids. The canoe I was in flipping over, trapping me underneath in water that was over my head until I managed to kick and push upward with my hands to get out from under the canoe and be pulled to safety. Not long after that, I was on a church retreat on Lake Travis. One of the guys from my Sunday School class asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a canoe, and I foolishly said O.K. I thought we would be just paddling around the little inlet where I had seen canoers earlier. Uh-uh. That would have been too easy. As soon as we got in the canoe, he began rowing toward the middle of the lake.  Ski boats and skiers were passing us on both sides—simultaneously. We were bobbing up and down more than a fishing buoy in a hurricane.

Even with my history, I didn’t anticipate any problems with water aerobics because the part of the pool we use isn’t very deep, certainly not over my head. Also, the water aerobics sessions, at least in the mornings, tends to be geared toward the “Silver Sneakers” group (retirees), some of them recovering from or dealing with limitations associated with strokes and arthritis. I knew I was fairly strong and had only a couple of knee and ankle problems to deal with—and the water should help with those. I surely should be able to do what people 10 to 20 years older could do.

How difficult could water aerobics be? Famous last words.

I’ve been going two days a week, Mondays and Wednesdays. Each day has a different instructor, so the routines vary. To warm up, both instructors use techniques like jogging in place or doing jumping jacks in the water, simple enough for me. To build strength, they asked us to use Styrofoam barbells and foam “noodles” under the water—also simple.

Then they embellished the routines, linking several moves together to music. Sounds a lot like dancing, doesn’t it, and I have almost no sense of rhythm. (One of them incorporates the moves of the “Macarena,” popular a decade or so ago, and I couldn't do it then either.) Even the relatively simple rocking horse move (lunging forward on the right foot while the left foot comes off the bottom of the pool, simultaneously pushing water away from your body with both arms, then rocking back on the left foot as the right foot comes off the bottom of the pool and pulling both arms back toward your body) takes some getting used to. Just look at how many words it takes to describe the action. And then the instructor starts counting—up to 8, then backwards again to 1. We’re supposed to change position every time she calls a new number. I finally decided, if I can start with the class at 1 and end up with the class back at 1, the middle part isn’t all that important. I just keep moving, and sometimes I’m with the class (rarely) and sometimes I’m not (usually).

Another drill one of the instructors loves is when we hold our hands clasped above our heads and run across the pool in chest-deep water as fast as we can, until she stops us and tells us to run backwards. (Did I mention that she’s retired military?) Running in water is less dangerous for me than trying to run on land or even in a gym because I’m not as likely to trip myself and fall by dragging my right foot, the one with the nerve that doesn’t work right. The water offers resistance, which is good exercise, but stopping is more difficult. My momentum always takes me forward another two or three steps when she says to stop before I can initiate the reverse movement. That would be O.K. if I were in the pool by myself, but this is a class, remember? I do not want to be known as the one who ran over some senior citizen in the pool. And I’ve come close to doing just that.

The instructor of the Monday class likes to have us use one of the “noodles,” the ends held securely in each hand, for support in the water as we do some sideways underwater kicks. I don’t fully trust the “noodles” so I keep one foot on the bottom of the pool as I lean forward with the “noodle” and kick with the other foot.  About two weeks ago, as I kicked out with my right leg, the calf muscle cramped. All I had to do was put the right foot down and stand up. Sure, I know that now, but at that moment my instinct was to grab the cramping leg, which meant turning loose of the “noodle” with my right hand, causing me to toppled over backwards and splash everyone within a five-foot radius while I tried to regain my footing. The only thing that could have been more embarrassing would have been if the lifeguard had jumped in to help me, and he was leaning forward with his buoy when I finally managed to get both feet on the bottom of the pool again.

Both instructors like to have us do a cross-country skiing move in the pool, alternating between right leg and left arm forward, left leg and right arm back and left leg and right arm forward, right leg and left arm back. This one has great potential for disaster. First, I have to keep my arm and leg movements coordinated, an almost impossible task for somewhat who can lose her balance and fall while standing still. To complicate the exercise, one of the instructors likes to insert a “tuck” (pulling the knees up toward the body) while changing the foot and arm positions. Second, this is a move based on skiing, and I may be the world’s worst skier. No kidding. No title has been conferred--yet, but I think it probably is well deserved. I flunked ski school years ago in Breckinridge, Colo., on my one and only attempt at the sport after I took the ski instructor down in the snow several times (unintentionally, of course) and then knocked down my whole ski school class just like dominoes as we lined up to climb the bunny slope sideways. (I was at the bottom of the hill when the instructor told us to lean on the side of our skis to hold our position on the incline. I leaned a little too far, fell on the person next to me, who fell on the next person, and so on all the way to the top of the hill.) For my own safety, and that of everyone skiing on the mountain that day, the instructor advised me to go have some hot chocolate and watch the ice skaters on Maggie Pond.

I’ve wondered if I need to put a disclaimer somewhere on my swimsuit, especially on those days when the pool is really crowded: “Warning—Totally out of control waterphobe with bad balance, prone to sudden, unpredictable movements, frantic splashing, and sheer panic. Approach at your own risk.”

Despite the (unplanned) thrills I’ve experienced in water aerobics, I have enjoyed the classes, and I think they’ve been successful in some respects. My upper arms and shoulders seem more muscular, and I do have a greater range of motion in my legs. I’ve also gotten used to the smell of chlorine which seems to cling to me, no matter how much I shower, wash my hair, and launder my swimsuit and towels. It’s not an unpleasant smell, really—mixed with my pineapple-coconut bath gel and body lotion, it smells like summer. 

An Anniversary of Sorts

This past Sunday, July 15, was an anniversary for me. Not the kind that you receive gifts for, like a birthday or wedding anniversary, but an anniversary all the same, one that I expect I will continue to observe for the rest of my life. And like a lot of holidays on the calendar, it is closely paired with another date: Memorial Day/Veteran’s Day, Flag Day/the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving/Christmas, Christmas Eve/Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day, Christmas/Easter, Mardi Gras/Easter, Hanukkah/Passover, etc.   

For me, the paired dates are April 8 and July 15, both in 2012. April 8 was the date I was in a major car accident that could have taken my life. July 15 was the date I was finally released from my tour of North Texas hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers. I guess I could add a third date to that list, October 29, 2012, the date I was released from outpatient rehabilitation, but that date didn’t have the impact (no pun intended) of the other two.

At the time of the accident I had very little experience with doctors and hospitals other than routine treatment for an occasional bout with allergies or a sinus infection. I had pneumonia several years earlier and had to miss work for seven days, but even that was really not a big deal. I just stayed home, took my medicine, and slept a lot. I had previously had three broken bones, a toe, and both pinkie fingers, and those were three separate injuries. Other than that, good health.

That night in April, in an instant, I had a broken right femur caused by sliding sideways into the gear shift, a broken left wrist caused by the exploding airbag, and a broken left ankle, cause unknown, just the force of the impact, I guess. Emergency medical technicians worked to stabilize my injuries before getting me out of the car, then took me across the intersection to a field where a waiting CareFlite helicopter took me to Harris Methodist Hospital in downtown Fort Worth. I was there for most of the month of April, including the first three days in intensive care.

Next, I went to Heritage Oaks Nursing Home/Rehab in north central Arlington where I spent a month trying to build up my strength. Most of the residents were elderly people who had had strokes, but there were a few residents who were about my age, although they, too, were recovering from strokes. I was the only one of the residents I met there who was healing from a car accident.

In early June of 2010, I moved to the HealthSouth Rehabilation Hospital in south central Arlington. By that time I was able to move myself from the bed to a wheelchair and then back to the bed. The therapists there were real slave drivers, in a nice sort of way. They really worked us, but again, most of the residents were older than I was and many were in much more serious condition. By that time I was a lot stronger, and I got even stronger propelling myself up and down the halls in the wheelchair. I still wasn’t able to put any weight on my left ankle because some of the bones were still being held together with a screw, so I couldn’t do any standing. My physical therapist could not understand why I wasn’t able to stand up on just one leg, but I told him, “It’s called a lack of coordination. I couldn’t stand up without using both legs before the accident.” I still can’t. So since he couldn’t get me to stand, he had me left weights to strengthen my arms.

At the end of the last week of June, I returned to Heritage Oaks for another stay. I needed to have surgery to remove the screw in my ankle, and HealthSouth doctors determined they could do no more until the surgery was done. This time at Heritage Oaks I was much more independent, although I was still in a wheelchair. I could get myself into and out of bed, go get whatever I needed from the nursing staff, maneuver myself into the bathroom, and take a shower by myself. I was there a little more than a week. I had the surgery on a Thursday afternoon, and the following Monday, I moved one last time.

This time I went to Arlington Rehabilitative Hospital in northwest Arlington. The nurses, doctors, and therapists there were very nice and quite competent. They specialized in working with stroke victims, and they did get me a lot of practical instruction on how to do things around the house: load the washer or the dishwasher, maneuver through a narrow bathroom door with a walker, go up and down steps and curbs. However, a lot of the skills they would ordinarily have taught me I had already learned at Heritage Oaks and HealthSouth.

Finally, on July 15, I was released from that hospital to go home. I certainly couldn’t do much on my own at first. My principal exercise was in walking from the back of the house to the front and back to my recliner several times a day. But I started outpatient rehab and began to do things with my friends from church again. In early August, I bought a Hyundai Santa Fe to replace the Saturn totaled in the accident and went back to school when school started.

So Sunday, as I thought about the ways my life has changed in the two years since I ended my hospitalization from the accident, I noted a lot of changes. I’m not fully recovered, and it looks like I may never regain all the abilities I had before the accident. The broken femur stretched the nerve that affects the ability to raise and lower the front part of my foot by flexing the ankle. The doctor thought that would eventually come back, but so far it hasn’t. I’ve figured out a way to compensate most of the time, but I still have to be careful that I don’t drop my toes, stumble, and fall. I have fallen once that way, and I’ve tripped and caught myself many times. So I’ve had to slow down. My left ankle still swells if I stand up too long or walk too far. And my left wrist is still weak and may eventually develop carpal tunnel problems.

While I usually walk with a cane, I’m notorious for putting it down somewhere and walking off without it. Once, in the spring, I was standing by the classroom door when the fire alarm rang, and I was halfway out of the building before I realized the cane was still in the classroom. Oh, well. I made it outside and back with no mishaps. Some of my friends see that as a sign that I may one day not need the cane, but others, those with less respect for their elders, say it’s just proof that I’m absent-minded.

I’m gearing up to start my third year of school after the accident. This may be my last year to teach in public school. I’ve been thinking I might retire and collect my teacher retirement, while teaching in one of the private schools or community colleges in the area. I might do some writing, or I could just be a substitute teacher in Arlington and Mansfield. That would save me a lot on gasoline if I could work closer to home and eliminate the daily 56-mile commute.

Looking back, I can see how far I’ve come in two years, and I’m still hoping to improve further. I’ve also become more sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities. In the fall of 2010 I went to the State Fair of Texas with the assistance of a motorized scooter I rented at the fair. And in that scooter, to most of the people at the fair I was every bit as invisible as Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility made him. I tried to buy my lunch at one of the indoor booths at the fair and was ignored until my sister DJ happened to pass by and asked, “You still don’t have your food?” She ordered for me, and I finally got my lunch. Fair-goers stepped in front of me and cut me off from the rest of my group all day, only noticing my presence if I was unable to stop in time and bumped into them. (No, I didn’t do it on purpose, but it was tempting.)

I’ve become vocal about the rights of the disabled, especially businesses that don’t have enough handicapped spaces or that pile merchandise in the aisles so that the aisles are too narrow to navigate with a walker or wheelchair. Maybe once I retire, I’ll get involved with some advocate groups.

So on this second anniversary, all in all, I think I’m doing pretty well. I’m still able to work, although really enjoying my summer vacation, and I’m starting to look ahead to life after high school—at last, 43 years after most of my classmates left their high school days behind.

A Legacy of Fathers

    Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and once again the stores are full of sport shirts, ties, cologne, and all sorts of sports equipment for the multitudes of fathers being honored on this once-a-year event.

I can recall going the ties, socks, and handkerchief route when I was a child, because those were the sort of things that were in my budget. As I got older (and had more financial resources), I moved on to fishing rods, athletic shoes, and clothes. On Daddy’s last Father’s Day, I took him several new shirts that I thought would be cool and comfortable for him for summer. Although they weren’t the kind he normally wore, he put one on and wore it that day.

Of course, none of us knew then that he was in his last month with us. We’d watched him getting weaker since his collapse before Christmas, but we’d thought originally that, once he got out of the hospital and the rehab center in Temple and back home in Lampasas, where he could have visits from friends and relatives daily, he’d improve. Early on, it seemed that might happen. We’d visit on weekends and take him out to have a Dr Pepper at Storm’s or a burger from Sonic, and he’d seem to enjoy it. Back then no matter how tired he was, he was never ready to be taken back to the nursing home.

That changed, however, later in the spring. We had driven over to San Saba where he had lived as a boy, and he enjoyed the scenery for a while, but as he got tired, he began to be restless and finally expressed a desire to be taken “home.” He’d never referred to the nursing home that way before. By Father’s Day I’d finally almost accepted that the nursing home would be his permanent residence, but that Sunday he seemed in good spirits and really enjoyed the day.

Thinking back to the gifts we gave him over the years, they weren’t much in comparison to what he’d given to us, not only his hard work to provide for the family as long as he was physically able, but his pride in each of his three kids, his excitement whenever we came for a visit, his sadness whenever it was time for us to leave. We never had to wonder if Daddy loved us. He showed his love every day when we were all at home, and by the time we were grown and ready to leave home, we didn’t question it.

That didn’t mean, however, that he wasn’t strict. He believed part of being a good father was in being a disciplinarian whenever we misbehaved. I know from family stories that I was responsible for more than my share of that misbehavior, including getting loose in church one Sunday during the invitation time at the end of the service when I wasn’t much more than a toddler. I ran down one of the aisles on the side of the church, and he stepped out in the aisle to chase me. To my 2-year-old self, that meant “play time with Daddy,” so I began to squeal as he gave chase. He finally caught me by doubling back. I kept looking behind me to see where he was and didn’t notice him coming around in front of me. He took me out and spanked me, and I never interrupted another service in that way again. 

Daddy had learned to be a father from his own father, my grandfather whom we called “Hampa.” Apparently, I couldn’t say Grampa when I first started talking, so what came out was Hampa, and it stuck. Hampa was a quiet, gentle man when I knew him, a man who had worked hard for his family and was a person of integrity. In his earlier years, he had worked as a blacksmith, a fact that did not seem to correspond to his short stature and small, wiry build. Later, when Daddy was a boy, the youngest of three in that family, he had done some sharecropping and the whole family—children, too—picked cotton. They worked hard, and none of the three children went to school for very long, but their memories of that time were good ones: trips to West Texas by covered wagon, fish fries and campouts on the Lampasas River, visits to see relatives on the Gulf Coast.

Because of an experience he had as a young man with his own father, Hampa had resolved to be a good father to his own children, even if they did have to work picking cotton or doing other farm chores. His own father, a man who had 10 children by his first wife and four more when she died and he married her sister, was not a nurturing sort of father. In fact, he was a hard man who was known for telling his children, the boys anyway, that he was not going to support them anymore, that it was time for them to make their own way in the world. This usually happened when they were teenagers, and because Hampa was one of the oldest, this happened to him. In fact, Hampa was working on his own when he received word that his mother was dying, so he went home to visit her on her deathbed. His father met him at the door and refused to let him in to see her.

In my 35 years as a teacher, I’ve seen a lot of students come through my classes who have no real relationship with their fathers, some of them who have never even met their father, and many others who have grown up without even a father figure in their lives. The numbers have seemed to increase in recent years. Unfortunately, statistics say that, by not having personally seen and experienced a father’s love, many of them will also be absentee fathers, producing a new generation of children who grow up essentially without a father’s influence. That certainly was not the case with us.

Besides Daddy’s influence, we also had Hampa and our mother’s foster father, Grandman. Both of them spent time with us and had an influence on our lives. My brother loves to tell about one time that he spent the night with Hampa. They had planned to have cornflakes the next morning for breakfast, but when they checked the refrigerator, all he had was buttermilk, so they are their cornflakes that morning with buttermilk.

Grandman used to tell us some of the wildest tall tales imaginable, and we kids believed every word he said. Grandman was also a hunter, and he loved hunting squirrels. In his youth, squirrels had been a part of the family food supply, and he continued to enjoy eating squirrel all his life. In fact, one of the memories my sister has of visits with Granny and Grandman was looking into their freezer and seeing those little aluminum-foil-wrapped, four-legged bodies.

When my brother married and had three children of his own, I saw him become the same sort of strong, dependable father Daddy had been as Daddy adjusted to a new role as grandfather, or Papaw, as Corey, Graham, and Casey called him. By that time, Hampa and Grandman were no longer with us, but Daddy did the sort of things with his grandchildren that his father and father-in-law had done. Daddy took Corey and Graham fishing and went to watch their T-ball games when they were small, and sat on a tiny chair or on the floor drinking pretend “coffee” as Casey “cooked” in her little kitchen.

Now Corey, Graham, and Casey are grown, and Graham is married and has two little girls. Daddy would have loved spoiling those two little girls, but since he’s not here, my brother has moved into the role of grandfather, or Pops, as Ava Grace and Edy Rose call him, and he treats them like princesses. Graham, their father, having learned from the example of his father and grandfather, spends time with his girls, loving them, providing for them, training them, and disciplining them when necessary.  

We have a legacy of strong fathers in the family, but thinking about them always makes me think of something Jesus said in one of his sermons. As good as human fathers can be, they aren’t perfect, but most fathers do want what is best for their children, even though they may not know how to provide it. As Jesus said, “What kind of father, if his child asked for something to eat, would give him a rock?” (That’s the Ann Hale version, paraphrased.) “So if flawed human fathers try to take care of their children, how much more would our Heavenly Father do for his children?”

The legacy is this: the experience we have of the strong fathers mentioned above, and of other loving fathers among our uncles, cousins, and friends, shows us in a small way just how great God’s love for us is.

May you all have a happy Father’s Day, surrounded by the love and memories of strong, loving fathers among your family members and friends.

Teaching as Hazardous Duty

Last Friday we ended the first semester, as usual, with exams and grading. This year we stretched the exam days from three to four, with the seventh period on Tuesday, first and sixth on Wednesday with shortened class periods in between for second, third, fourth, and fifth periods, second and fifth on Thursday and third and fourth on Friday with students released at 11:30 a.m. both Thursday and Friday. Thursday and Friday afternoons were spent with students making up work or time (classes missed because of too many absences) and teachers trying to finish grading and to get all grades entered into the computer grade book.

Friday afternoon the silence was suddenly pierced by the sound of a student screaming at someone down the hall. The sound came from the direction of the library where the students were making up time. From what I could understand of his sometimes incoherent screams, he believed that he had somehow been wronged by the teacher monitors in the library and, to paraphrase one of the characters in the movie Network, he was mad as could be and not going to take it anymore. For a moment I considered going to the aid of the teacher at whom the student was yelling when it occurred to me that the situation might already be resolved by the time I got down there, and what exactly was I going to do anyway? Hit the student with my cane if he stopped yelling and resorted to physical force? So I stayed in my seat and moments later heard reinforcements arrive in the form of several assistant principals and some other teachers.

The boy sounded angry enough to have caused physical harm when he was yelling, but when the other adults arrived, he calmed down quickly, even when he was escorted off campus. While I personally have never been directly threatened with physical harm, I know teachers who have been, and I’ve dealt with plenty of angry students. In fact, there are a lot of students whose primary emotion seems to be anger. They may have yelled at me, called me a name, or even in one instance, thrown their textbooks, but most have retained enough control not to do anything that could be perceived as assault.

I did have one student last year, while I was still using the walker to get around, who quietly made an adjustment on my walker while I was helping another student. He shortened one leg of the walker by about eight inches and sat there watching to see if I would fall. Fortunately, I reached for the walker without relying on it to hold me, so when it tipped over backwards, it didn’t take me with it. It was only a few days before semester exams, and he was removed from my classroom for the second semester.

Since my accident in 2010, which left me with some difficulties in walking, I have learned to beware of the accidental injuries that could come at school. The hallways are crowded and can be dangerous when students are dashing down them to avoid being tardy. In the halls I generally try to stay close to the walls, just in case. The biggest danger I encounter every day is being run into by someone who isn’t looking where he’s going. One day last week as I came into the building from the parking lot, the same boy ran into me not once but twice. Actually, he didn’t hit me but the little cart I use to transport my things from the car to my room. He cut around behind me and tripped over the cart, then regained his footing, took a couple of steps, and bumped into it again.

That I’ve never had to deal directly with the possibility of physical force is not to say that I haven’t been in some situations where I thought I might get hurt. I tried to break up a fight between two boys one morning as one of them had grabbed the other and was dragging him towards the glass doors of the trophy cases outside the gym. His intent was apparently to ram the other boy’s head into the glass. When he didn’t stop when I told him to, my recourse was to grab the boy he was pulling and try to release him. After a few moments of tug-of-war with the boy in the middle between his assailant and me, the attacker gave a tremendously powerful jerk that nearly pulled me off my feet, but I had slowed him down enough for several coaches and an assistant principal to get there and break up the fight.

I was nearby when a similar fight between girls broke out a couple of years ago. The aggressor began hitting and scratching wildly, while the other girl bent over in a defensive movement that shielded her face and eyes while she wrapped her arms around the other girl’s waist. The first girl continued pounding wildly on the back of the other girl without being able to do any real damage. Another teacher and I pulled them apart and took them to the office.

The first time I ever tried to break up a fight between two girls, I had just made myself a big cup of hot tea. I was on my way to the office when I rounded a corner and saw the two fighting. I stepped between them, thinking that would break up the fighting. It didn’t. They continued to fight over and around me, jerking me from one side of the hall to the other, once even spinning me around in a circle. When help arrived to rescue me, there was no tea left in my cup but a wet trail of Earl Grey recording the path of the fight on the carpet.

My first several years of teaching were without incident. Sure, there were times when students misbehaved and got into trouble, but the first fight I witnessed and tried to break up occurred after a football game in Lampasas between two men who were not students. I had been at the game to take pictures and still had the school camera with me when I saw the two men, who appeared to have been drinking, insulting one another. Summoning up as much of an authoritative attitude as I could, I stepped up to them and asked them to break it up and move along. Since they didn’t seem to be much younger than I, they weren’t too impressed with my “teacher voice.” Still, I kept them apart until a couple of male teachers and a police officer arrived. Later, one of the male teachers who came to my rescue told me that he didn’t know if my standing up to those two guys was the bravest thing he had ever seen or the most stupid. Maybe a little of both.

But it was when I was teaching at Westlake High School in Austin that I had the most serious scare in all of my 35 years as a teacher. I had, as one of my students in a freshman English class, a young man who had just enrolled in school, coming to us from being an inpatient at a mental hospital. He had authority issues and was subject to violent outbursts. I knew from talking with him that he was obsessed with Charles Manson and the book Helter Skelter. But when one of the counselors called me in to tell me that he had written a note to another student telling his plans to kill me and another teacher at school the following Friday, I was shocked. The counselor showed me the note, which was illustrated with drawings of what he planned to do to me and to his Algebra I teacher. According to his drawings, he planned to stab me with what looked like a Bowie knife and shoot the Algebra I teacher in the head.

I was understandably upset, and most of my friends advised me to call in sick that day.  However, the counselor insisted that he didn’t believe the boy would go through with it, so I showed up at school that day with more than a little trepidation. The day was a student dress-up day where kids come to school in costume according to a pep rally theme. Shortly before the middle of the morning, I caught a glimpse of the boy from a distance. He was dressed as Rambo. Obviously, nothing happened, and the Rambo outfit seems oddly humorous now. The counselor was right. But keep in mind that that was before Columbine and the rest of the school shootings. A threat like that would have to be taken seriously now.

And while there does seem to be more of a climate of violence, especially among students, these days, especially where gangs have gained a foothold, the possibility of violent behavior in schools has probably always existed. I can remember hearing my grandmother, who had been a teacher in Fort Stockton in West Texas shortly after the turn of the 20^th century, tell about a problem she had with one of the older boys in her class. She had punished him for something he had done (I don’t remember either his offense or his punishment). The next thing she knew, his mother had strapped on her six-gun and was supposedly coming to the school to “straighten that teacher out.”

Someone must have talked her out of it, though, because the woman never appeared either at the school or at the boarding house where Granny lived. At the end of that school year, Granny decided that life on the frontier was a little too rough for her, so she visited with an old friend from college who introduced her to her brother-in-law. That would be my grandfather, whom we called Grandman, the subject of my first blog post. She married him and taught for many years in the Friendship School, a two-room schoolhouse southwest of the Adamsville Community.

So while I have had a few close encounters with student violence, the majority of my dealings with students have been, if not always cordial, then at least manageable. Frequently, the ones who have caused problems in school for me have come back years later to apologize for their behavior as students. And many of my students over the years who have been great as students have stayed in touch and come to regard me as a friend. As I realize that my teaching career is winding down to a close in the not-too-distant future, I’m happy to say that, overall, the students have been the best part of my job, and the source of most of the “hazardous duty” experiences of my career have come from adults—parents, administrators, and even one school board president.