My real entry for today is here.
One of the things I enjoy about work -- you didn't think there was anything, didja? -- is the people I get to interact with. Today, I sat and had coffee with an interesting few, but there's one I want to write about.
This teacher is a legend in the school, literally. People tell tales about them, and very few people know if they're true or not. One of the best stories is that he's a trained killer. In fact, he is. As you can imagine, he has very little trouble with discipline and classroom control.
He teaches wood shop, and has been teaching that in my school for over 40 years. He is soft spoken and gentle, and extremly handsome. (He was the heart-throb when I was a kid there in the 60s and 70s.) He sings beautifully, something like Robert Goulet, and has often done so at faculty parties.
After he taught at the school for two years, I think it was, he took a leave of absence for military service. He served in Viet Nam for two years as a Green Beret, hence his status as a trained killer. Then he came back to the wood shop, where he's been ever since. Btw, when he retires, his military service counts towards his pension as teaching years; it does for all veterans.
Anyway, part of his legend is that once, when he saw a fight going in an area surrounded by a four-and-a-half-foot high wall, he placed one palm on the wall, vaulted over it, and broke up the fight. This is also true. It happened when I was a student there. No one talked abut anything else for days.
The other thing he used to do to amuse his students was hang sideways from a pole. Hard to describe that one, but he would grip a pole in the room with both hands, a pole about six inches in diameter, and hold his body out straight, parallel to the ground. This takes an inhuman amount of upper body strength. I also know this is true because R saw him do it once.
I've also discussed all this with him, and he laughs at it, but confirms that it all happened, except he doesn't discuss Viet Nam except to say that yes, he was there and he was a Green Beret. He is still somewhat conservative, but no one discusses politics with him, we all just respect his military service. (Although there was that one day when he was explaining, quietly, his opposition to all things gay, and said that he had never met a gay person, and my friend Hank, GSA advisor, who had sat and had coffee with him every day for years, just sort of nodded and said nothing. Why burst a comfortable bubble?)
He's the grand old man of the school, one of our oldest staff members and one of the most respected. He does extra duty for an hour after school, patrolling the halls. No one messes with him. He's lean and trim, and still looks like he could break someone in half, he just doesn't want to.
Anyway, over coffee today, we were talking about yesterday's Oprah, which we had both seen and been moved by. Like I say, sometimes, people at work are just cool.
