What’s With Those Teachers, Anyhow?

A mug of sizzling hot coffee sits on my desk. In the yard, a robin swoops toward the zinnias, a couple of squirrels play tag in my neighbor’s yard. And my thoughts return to olden, golden days, school days–and the teachers who walked in and out of the classrooms of my life. Those teachers were just people, like you and me, but during the school day, they were the focus of my attention and some of their memorable traits, quite naturally, stuck in my mind.

I remember Miss Virginia who lavished all her care and attention on the tiny school called Valley Center. She truly cared about each one of us, fixed up her classroom to look inviting and interesting, and encouraged us to always do our best.

In high school, Mrs. H. was my English and Spanish teacher. She really enjoyed teaching Spanish and I enjoyed learning. She had a pet term for her students–little pointed heads–but we thought of it as a term of endearment and didn’t mind.

College offered a fertile field for many different instructors and each one had his or her small idiosyncracies. There was the psychology professor who was a short man but who had the interesting habit of rocking back and forth from heels to tiptoes as he lectured. He had a unique way of pronouncing the word three, making two syllables of it. Tha-ree he called it. He also had a tendency to doze off while he was showing a filmstrip. Funny, how I remember those things, all these decades later.

In my junior year in high school, my English teacher loved Edgar Allen Poe. The man she married bore a close resemblance to Mr. Poe, and I’m convinced that’s why she was so devoted to him.

Anyway, teachers have impacts on children. And, at the end of another school year, these people who wield such an influence on young lives will fade into past history. As these dedicated (for the most part) educators moved through my life, I tucked them away for future use in stories. Yes, even decades ago, I wanted to be a writer. These writing resolutions are a tribute to what they taught me.

I firmly resolve and forswear to work hard at sharpening my writing skills by never, ever writing run-on sentences unless they are called for by content of the story or one of the characters steps up and says he is going to say thus and so causing the sentence to become first a paragraph, then a page and thus running the risk of causing the reader’s head to swim and eyes to cross but then, I guess that’s the way the old ball bounces.

I firmly resolve to use shorter and more succinct words when elaborating on scenic descriptions which are pertinent to encouraging the storyline to become ambulatory instead of stagnating in some insipid and inert pool of affectation.

I firmly resolve to chek my speling and never, ever, not even hardlee ever send in a manuskrip to an editor that has a bunch of mispelt words. Nope, Nun!

And, with that goofiness out of my system, I firmly resolve that another cup of coffee is in order to center my mind on the serious task of editing.

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