The Wright Stuff

In my last post, I mentioned Mr. Jordan - My 7th and 8th Grade science teacher and his love for David Letterman. With that in mind, I thought I'd give a run down of some of my teachers.

Mrs. Sparks was my kindergarten teacher. I can't remember much about her other than the fact that she made us take naps and I didn't like that too much.

Mrs. Ellrod (1st Grade) had us do those really long math worksheets with 100 problems. I did the first row and told her I was done .... you see I thought if I could do an example of each problem, I shouldn't need to do the rest (I didn't need to practice something I already had down). Let's just say, bad idea.

Mrs. Steiner (2nd Grade) was a great teacher. I especially liked the dick and Jane books ... oh and the Valentines party.

Mrs. Fry (3rd Grade) introduced me to Narnia. She read us The Wardrobe during recess when it was too cold and snowy to go outside. I think her husband wrote worship songs and is some big praise-guy now. I could be terribly wrong about this - but hey it's my blog.

In 4th Grade, I transferred to the Christian School my mom was teaching at and had Mrs. Suzy Wratten .. notice I know her first name because she was a friend of my Mom's. That made it even more wrong when I called her Mrs. "rotten" at the dinner table. Kenny Rodriguez did it all the time and I bet he didn't get in trouble for saying it.

In 5th Grade I had 2 teachers, Mr. Davies and Mr. Veith. One day Mr. Veith was having a bad day and sat at his desk with his head in his hands as we came in from lunch. I asked him if his face hurt, he said, "no - why". When I laughed and said that it was "killing me" he didn't think it was funny. Again, bad idea.

6th Grade I transferred back to Bixby and had Mrs. Stubbs. I can't tell you much about her (or my other teacher who's name I've forgotten) but I can tell you that in 6th grade I met Darin. He and I quickly became best friends, and when the musical "welcome to the sky" was performed by the 6th graders - he and I played Orville and Wilbur Wright. We sang ( and God help me) danced a song called "The Wright Way to Do It" complete with a musical interlude during which we did the Charleston and swung our canes around on our fingers as we waived out straw hats.

Darin was in Mr. Jordan's Jr. High Science classes with me and we were inseparable. He was in this cool thing at church called "Royal Rangers" and he and his dad picked me up to take me every Wednesday Night. He was always a better ranger that I was ... of course his dad was a commander and he'd been in it since the program started. I remember the three of us cooking beans in a can over a fire we illegally built out behind their house.

After 8th grade, I moved to Springfield. I can't remember more than a handful of my remaining teacher's names (mostly band directors and the odd Psychology teacher ... and I do mean Odd). Darin stayed in Bixby, he joined the band too and I even got to see him march (one time .... at band camp) while I was visiting my Grandma in Tulsa.

We stayed in touch over the years now and then. He moved to Springfield to go the Central Bible College and after we were both married, there were a few years that we hung out now and then and played cards on our back porch. He and his wife Diana are missionaries to Cambodia now. They've adopted a daughter named Mycah, and they stopped in too see us the last time they were in the states.

Darin and I are very different. In some ways he's still the same guy as when we were kids telling one of our friends that he was going to Hell for listening to a band called U2. Sadly, we did that sort of thing a lot - bad idea. I'm still that same guy too, I suppose - though with a slightly more diverse taste in music.