Breast. The word that fills in the blank is breast. It�s from a poem, Casey at the Bat, by E. L. Thayer.I had a teacher in 10th grade, Mr. Buckley, who later became a colleague when I came back to work in the same school. He�s retired now, for 10 years or so. He taught English and Public Speaking.
I was too shy to answer a question in class, but all sophomores had to take Public Speaking or Drama, so there wasn�t much choice for me. From my first day in Mr. Buckley�s class, I knew two things immediately:
I was terrified of him
I loved him, totally, and always would
The only way he can be described is as a hyperactive leprechaun. He never stopped moving, or talking. He was just over five feet tall, and had those great twinkly blue Irish eyes, and white hair. He told me that his hair and gone white when he was about 20, and in the Army. When I first knew him he was probably about 35.
He danced around the classroom. What was terrifying about him, for a shy girl like me, was that he let NO ONE in his class blend into the background or refuse to be a part of things. He knew nearly every kid in the school, since everyone but the actor-types took his class, but he pretended to know no names. Or maybe his thoughts were moving so fast � he was unbelievably quick-witted � that he really couldn�t� get names out along with the quips. Instead, he focused on a personal feature � physical or otherwise � and that became your name for life. If you wore really nice brown boots to school one day, you might be known forever (even if you visited after graduation) as �Miss Brown Boots Girl.� If he saw you in the hall with your football player boyfriend, you could become �Mr. Football Man�s Companion.� If your name was Sue Smith, he might just connect that as a common last name, and you could be �Miss Not-Miss-Jones.� Some of the names were light-hearted barbs, but none of them were mean.
He was gentle to me. His criticism of my speeches were always complimentary and positive, as if he knew I was too insecure to take the hard stuff. Wanting to be a teacher even then, I knew that he was teaching me how to do it. Every day I was in his class, he was teaching me to be a master teacher, like he was.
And then I was back, and we were pals. We had lunch together, and free period. He was as quick and sharp and gentle and funny and wonderful. He quoted poetry, and especially loved American verse, like James Whitcomb Riley and Longfellow.
He teased, and could be teased. He had never married, went devoutly and without fail to church with his mother, with whom he still lived in the house where he grew up. A younger brother had married and died young. An older brother was a priest in the Philippines. Their father had himself died when his sons were still boys.
Mr. Buckley was a delightful prude, not about the behavior of others or even his students, but he could be made to blush so easily that it was a game for us in the faculty room. He could not, would not, use 4-letter words of any kind, or refer to women with anything but absolute respect.
It was one of his favorite expressions, from a poem he loved, and he couldn�t say it out loud. �Hope,� he would say, �springs eternal in the human person.�
I cried when he retired, and gave him a book of the poems he loved. I had met my husband in his class when we were in 10th grade. The school has been a very different place for me since he left.
He is not gone from this world, not that I know of. He was very unhappy with changes that were being made in the school at that time, and rightly so, and has not kept in touch, except with other retirees. I had the radio on before, and I hear it, probably on a commercial: �Hope springs eternal.� I always hear the end of that, playing in my head: �in the human person.� Sometimes I say it out loud. It�s good when that happens; then I have to explain why I said �person� instead of �breast�, and I get to tell someone about Mr. Buckley.
