The Least Influential Teacher

A random writing prompt from the WritingFix website (no editing):
"Who taught you close to nothing? Write about the teacher who had the least impact on you."



In 8th grade, I was the ultimate nerd. I loved school and, since I was inept at sports, my competitive nature was fueled by grades. How well I did on quizzes, was I the highest scorer on the test, and did I get straight A’s were my benchmarks in the world as I knew it. I wasn’t that great in technical subjects, like math, but ones which demanded my own thoughts and opinions were the classes where I excelled.

History was my favorite because it was the closest to meeting that criteria. Yes, I had to memorize dates and places, but the wonderful thing about history was the fact that you had to analyze why certain events happened. And then, you could wonder if certain events, which seemed small at the time, hadn’t happened, what would the world be like today? And were bad events almost necessary to get us to where we are now? Wonderful, philosophical questions came from the study of history and I was an ardent student.

So, imagine my disgust when, on my first day of 8th grade, in walked Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith was the new wrestling coach and was “made” to also teach. And he got history as his subject. I spent the year horrified as he put the Battle of Normandy in Britain, insisted FDR served two terms, and only wanted the basics of dates and places. There were no philosophical discussions in Mr. Smith’s class, except in his discussion of the previous night’s wrestling meet.

He was even worse in classroom management. He seemed like he wanted to be our peer instead of teacher. So dealing with him was exactly like dealing with a friend you would have in junior high. One day, you were his best friend and could do no wrong. The next, you had committed some unknown grievance and were made to sit in the hallway.

The final straw for me was the class trip we were supposed to take. I was told one day before I wouldn’t be able to go because my name was on the board. Earlier in the year, Mr. Smith had decided a “Lord of the Flies” approach to teaching was needed and told students that if anyone bothered them, they could write that student’s name on the board and said student would be punished. I pointed out that the date my name was written on the board was on a day I wasn’t even in class but was at a band competition. He thought for a minute and then said, “Well, that doesn’t matter. Your name was on the board and you can’t go.”

I wished horrible things for Mr. Smith on that day, or at least as horrible as a twelve-year old’s mind can go. Mainly, I just wished he wasn’t my teacher anymore, or anyone else’s teacher for that matter. He was young, athletic, loved wrestling, and obviously didn’t want to be in the classroom. Why couldn’t he just go away?

Fast forward fifteen years and I was an assistant administrator of a nursing home. Our facility had been advertising for a housekeeper and we hadn’t received any good applicants. I had gotten back from a short vacation and went to the administrator’s office. She told me she had finally found a new housekeeper and he was in my office filling out paperwork and would be ready for me to give him an orientation to the facility policies and rules. I walked into my office and my stomach hit the floor. There, sitting in one of the chairs and obviously struggling with the paperwork, was Mr. Smith. The years had not been kind. When he looked up at me, I didn’t see any kind of recognition in his eyes and thought maybe I got it wrong. We started talking and it was obvious that drug use had taken most his faculties and even simple sentences were difficult. I kept glancing at his paperwork and there was his name all over it. It had to be him. Finally, I looked at his resume; there it was, the schooling and degree needed for him to have the past I remembered.

We both ignored the elephant in the room and I took care of his paperwork and orientation. It was strange to tell Mr. Smith, now called by his first name, to clean up the various messes of a nursing home. My twelve-year old heart would have loved to be in the position to order Mr. Smith around, but my twenty-seven year old heart wondered how did he become like this?

Finally, one day, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I saw Mr. Smith in the hallway and started to say, “You probably don’t remember me, but I was a student of yours…” He interrupted me and stated that he did remember. He realized it on the first day. He didn’t give a lot of details of his life since then. But, at one point, he did put his head down and quietly said, “Well, I wasn’t that good of a teacher anyway.”

There was a long silence. I didn’t know what to say. I know a part of him needed to hear that, yes, you were good back then; at one point in your life, you were good at something, Mr. Smith. But, I couldn’t do it. He wasn’t a good teacher because he didn’t have any interest in it. I just mumbled something about needing to get back to my office and the paperwork.

I still wonder what I should have said.

Overview of things to come

This might not be a good idea, but in order to answer the questions in response to my creative piece in the class, I'm going to try to answer with a minimum amount of details.

The piece was actually chronologically the 7th of 25 chapters in my story of stories, but is the first chapter in my book. Although this was submitted as a creative piece, the creativity is only in the telling. The stories themselves are as true as the breath you are taking. No..not the one you are exhaling..the one you are about to take..no..wait..okay, you need to keep up with me here! :-)

After telling us we were adopted, Mom told us about our dad being a crooked man, threatening my mother to the point she got scared and left - but left my sister and I with him. We traversed the country avoiding capture by the authorities, "hooking up" with his new girlfriend and our now believed-to-be-mother, and eventually he was arrested by the FBI and removed from our lives. This was a traumatic event for me (age 4+ at the time), which caused me to lose memory of everything prior to the day he was taken away by train. The rest of the story deals with discovering the whereabouts of my birth mother, discovering a brother, losing that brother again, our decision, disappointments and whole process of adoption of our children and much, much more.

The Lighter Side "Deception"-Revised thanks jkc

A month ago I saw an ad for a short story contest. The short story was to be on the topic "Deception" max 2000 words. This was my first attempt at writing something other than my own rambling thoughts. Of course I didn't submit this into the contest, but would like to put it here for your critique. Please I am not easily offended, so your bad review is welcome. I would prefer honest bad feedback than nothing or worse a nice gloss over that will keep me writing badly.
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Its 3:50 pm, almost time for my daughter to get off of work. I lazily rise from bed and walk over to the vanity to begin the monotonous task of applying my makeup.

“I better change my clothes; I wouldn't want to be caught with my pajamas on when she walks through the door.” I thought to myself.

I had been considering all day on what I was going to write regarding the topic of deception, and as I sat in front of the mirror, I realized at that very moment I was perpetrating the very act of it. “How ironic”, I thought, as I applied my lipstick.

How far will I carry this out? Will I make up a story about my day? Will I expound on events that never happened? That was never my intention.

The familiar sound of rain softly beats against the windows and slowly rises in intensity. The now heavy rain beating upon my roof was somewhat symbolic of the monsoon of guilt filling my heart. A mother's instincts begin to take over; I begin to worry about her picking up my grandson in this weather. I should have at the very least picked him up for her. I call her cell phone to see if she was caught in this downpour, but to my relief, she was just leaving work. We talk briefly, and I mention that I made fresh pinto beans for dinner. Immediately, I begin the dubious task of forming my alibi.

“Beans, they take hours to cook!” I thought to myself. Of all the ways to construct my tale, to be rooted into a story by the simple line: “When I got home, I made beans”. Why did I just say that? I shook my head, disappointed in myself.

It all began innocently enough; I didn't lie when I told her I had a training session I wanted to participate in. I wasn't trying to get out of watching my grandson today, so why the deception? I woke up tired, I was awake until nearly 3:00 a.m., obsessed with a writing project that demanded my attention. I don't do very well without a full night's sleep and knew I would regret it come morning. I woke up on time with every intention of attending the training session, even though I felt I was suffering from a hangover. In retrospect, I guess I knew deep down I wasn't going, but I didn't make the final decision until they had left the house.


Why does it matter so much, that she had to wake up a little earlier this morning, get her 3 year old son up and dressed and drive him approximately 20 miles to his great grandparent's house? Most parents have to drive their children to daycare every day. Truthfully, I concede, it does matter; I love that I am in a place in my life that I can make her life easier. She has a full time job, goes to school and still manages to do a splendid job raising my grandson; however, sometimes her attitude is more out of expectancy than of appreciation. For instance, when I told her she had to make arrangements for him on these particular days the look on her face alone made me feel guilty. So, now I battled with telling her that I decided to just stay at home today.

Why should I say anything at all? My initial intent was to look like I hadn't been home all day. Nothing needed to be said to the contrary, that's not really lying, is it? Even so, that one statement earlier dug me even deeper. She walks through the door,

“How was your day?”

“Good” I say, thinking, "just don't ask specifics and everything will be fine."
If she does ask more questions, will I continue to deceive her, or will I simply tell her the truth? Did she catch my earlier statement about getting home?

This is really not looking good for me.

"Ah the webs we weave", my mother used to say. As a child I didn't really understand what that meant, but if you have ever tried to pull down a spider web you know it sticks to your fingers and can get entangled in your hair. I guess that's what mother meant; deception is like a web, you have to pull it down to get to the truth but no matter how well you believe you've removed it the remnant of it will be left behind.

Could I lose her trust? What kind of message am I sending her? Even if she could never find out, I don't like how this is making me feel.

I preach honesty all of the time. Growing up in our home, my girls knew that the lie was always worse than the crime. Then I think, would I have been so convicted had I not had this writing assignment on my mind? What does that say about me? It might be time to take a personal inventory.

What drives us to tell a lie? Different things I presume, but mine was simple; I did not want to deal with the possibility that my daughter might have a bad attitude. I would have been right, and she would have been wrong, but now I have spent most of today feeling guilty, as if I was stealing this day.

If she does say something now, who am I to lecture? Reminding myself that it was me who made sure she understood the weight of deception. Besides, the moment of truth is inevitable, my daughter reads everything I write, she is my hardest critic and plays the role of my editor, so I guess the gig is up as they say. I can only hope she likes the way I put it on paper.

--The End--

Lightning Bugs

This is a piece I wrote in my journal about a month ago. It doesn't have anything to do with the class (I hope that's okay), but I just felt like sharing it.


One night in late June, I was sitting in my sun room, just relaxing and looking out over the back yard. The fireflies were out in force. The scores of little flashing dots showed up crisply against the near-black backdrop of trees in the rearmost portion of the yard. It was quite a light show.

Seeing the fireflies took me back to any number of summer evenings from my childhood. I was never one to go chasing fireflies in order to catch them in a jar, but they were still always a part of the scenery on those summer nights when I would be outside well after dark.

I was reminded of my father. He worked long hours during the summer, twelve or thirteen hour days, usually. He was a manager at the Birdseye frozen vegetable processing plant in town, and summer was their busy season. By the time he got home from work, it was usually approaching dusk. That was his time to tend to his garden, or to redo the yard work that my mother or I had not done to his satisfaction earlier in the day - which was pretty much all of it. He would keep working until it was too dark to see. Then he'd take his usual seat on the picnic table.

My father never sat at our picnic table unless there was a meal being served at the time or he was using it as an outdoor workbench. He preferred to sit on top of it with his feet resting on the bench and his elbows resting on his knees. With his bald head and aquiline nose, he looked like a majestic bird surveying his territory from a perch. On those long summer nights, he would sit on the table and sip beer and smoke a few cigarettes. I would often sit out there with him, partially because it seemed like something of a treat to be outside after dark, but mostly because I was a boy and wherever my dad was seemed like the right place for me to be too.

Dad didn't say a lot. Sometimes he'd comment about the state of his vegetable garden, more to himself than to me. Mostly he sat quietly, looking down with his head resting on his fingertips, moving only to take another sip from the beer or another drag from his Benson & Hedges. When he did the latter, the end of the cigarette would glow a little brighter for a few seconds. That would be followed by the sight of fireflies closing in on his position. Occasionally, he'd take a drag, and one of them would find the glowing butt so irresistible, they would fly directly into his face. The peace and calm of the night would suddenly be interrupted by Dad flailing his arms around, saying, "Shoo! Scat!! Goddamn lightning bugs!" To a seven-year-old, the scene of ones father getting dive-bombed by insects with all the resulting fidgeting and profanity is pure comedy gold. To me, the memory of it still is.

When I look back on those nights, I don't really remember much about what was going on inside the head of the young boy at that picnic table. But the old man who, at the time, was such a mystery, now seems like an open book. He worked like a dog all day to feed his family and pay the mortgage. The house he came home to was no palace, but it was his. With the few remaining hours of the day, he wanted to lose himself in a hobby and some chores around the yard - which, to him, were one in the same. Then finally, he had a chance to unwind and clear his mind enjoying some peace and quiet on a beautiful summer night, with his kid being seen but not heard.

I thought about those things as I sat alone in the sun room looking out on the back yard on a Friday night after a challenging week at work. I sat in the darkness and remembered the old man. And every now and then, my attention would be torn away from thoughts of what happened decades ago by a particularly intense display of insect fireworks in some corner of the back forty.

Goddamn lightning bugs.