Teachers

My favorite teachers in my middle school were:  Mr. John Gingles, 8^th grade Earth Science; Deb Land, 9^th grade English; and Coach Dale Morvan, 8^th grade Louisiana History.

Mr. Gingles was one of the most beautiful men I had ever met.  I was totally in love with him.  He was well over 6ft tall, with an auburn beard and mustache.  He was brilliant, and an avid chess player.  He was the first male teacher I would have, who didn’t have Coach attached to his name.  No offence to our coaches out there, but you could tell for some of them, coaching was their first choice and not teaching. Mr. Gingles was simply there for the love of teaching. 

Mr. Gingles was an Agnostic, something he had to explain to us.  A few of us tried to convert him, but he would not budge and refuted our ideas.  I admired him for sticking to his guns.  I was one of his brightest students, and we became fast friends.  I am still looking for him today.  I have yet to find him on the internet.  He had a profound impact on my life.  I would love him to read this article.  If y’all know where he is, please let me know.

At that time of my life I wanted to be an Oceanographer, like Dr. Bob Ballard, who had found the Titanic just a few years before.  Mr. Gingles encouraged me.  I gave up on that dream, when I realized I had to move away to where the ocean was, away from my family.  But at that time in my life, I was convinced I was going to go the Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon and study Oceanography.  One day I wanted to run the Hatfield Marine Science Center there on the Oregon coast, in Newport, Oregon. 

Every night I went to bed and studied the Oregon map.  I used to keep it in this shoe box, I had covered in another Oregon map.  It was full of tourist information on the state, and letters from a Oceanographer I had been corresponding with.  I had found his name in a newspaper article, about his work mapping the ocean floor.  He was at the Oregon State University.  So I figured that is where I would go too.  I read any book I could get on the subject, and subscribed to a scuba diving magazine, because I knew it was a skill I would need. 

I had decided I was going to have a house in Sweet Home, Oregon, just down the road from the institute.  I had it all planned out.  I think I even wrote a story or two about it.  For years I fanaticized about a place, I had only seen on a map.  I was headed west, like the pioneers before me, just 150 years after the gold rush.  I studied hard, but my math was terrible.  I kept getting it all turned around in my head.  I know now because of my lack of math skills, that I would have never made it. 

I wanted to be many things along the way, before I would become the writer, dog mom, blogger and wife I am today.  Some of my earliest memories are of “skating,” in Oma’s dining room in pantyhose, on her linoleum floor, which creates a kind of sliding action.  I would prop open her bathroom door, it was adjacent to her dining room, to see myself in her full length mirror, as I spun and jumped like the figure skaters I saw on TV.  Now remember people, Louisiana has no ice to support such a sport.  Well not naturally anyways, so this was as close as I got.   I would land with a great thud!  I still feel sorry for whoever lives in that house now, as I am sure I damaged the floor by doing that over and over again. 

I toyed with the idea of being a nurse, but I could not handle the idea of sticking people.  I didn’t want to hurt them.  So ditto on being a vet.  I could not imagine, having to be the one to put an animal to sleep.  I acted in many plays as a kid and I really liked it.  I thought a lot about being an actress, but that stopped when Sonya, my BFF, told me that I would have to sleep with directors and pose for Playboy. 

I think I hooked on to being an Oceanographer because of Dr. Bob Ballard yes, who remains a hero of mine to this day, but also because of this.  I am the first woman, in the female line of my family to be born inland in at least 50 years.  My mom was born on the coast in Corpus Christi, Oma in Danzig.  Oma and Ur-Opa (great grandfather), both worked in the Danzig ship yards.  My Grandpa spent his life at sea.  I still have no great passion for the sea the way my mother does.  She collects nautical things and visits the ocean regularly.  I was trying to live into that legacy about that time.  Now I am content for my local beach at Cypress Black Bayou, Biloxi every now and again, and some Jimmy Buffett music.  I kind of freak out when I can’t see land anymore.  I know I am a land lubber. 

So Coach Morvan taught me 8^th grade Louisiana History and I feel in love with it.  I’ve been in love with history and Louisiana for a long time.  I know I’m kind of a square, right?  I still think we should teach our kids in school, local history as well as the state and national stuff.  I think they need to understand how their community fits into the local scheme of things.

When I first wrote this article I believed Deb Land was my 8^th grade English teacher.  She was not, but I have still kept her in this article.  She was in fact my 9^th grade English teacher.  But it didn’t matter much, as we were all kind of squished together in one place, and teachers flowed between the main high school building, and the middle school building. 

In 9^th grade I had Deb Land as an English Teacher, and she was awesome.  That year she read Romeo & Juliet to us, and I fell in love with Shakespeare all over again.  She would read us a few lines, and then would tell us what it meant, and translate it into something we could understand.  She would then ask us what we thought about it.  I still feel Juliet was a freaking idiot.  If you’re that in love with a dude and he moves away, pick up your shit and go with.  Maybe I just don’t understand the times she lived in. It may not have been a real option in her mind.  I however really like the character of Juliet’s nurse maid, who had probable been her wet nurse, and raised this poor girl.  I have always thought if I ever got to be in a production of Romeo and Juliet that I would want to play her.  Cause she kept trying to talk some since into poor Juliet. 

Ms. Land also taught us grammar that year.  She would be reading from the book, and then look at it a bit distressed.  She would tell us to take our red pens, and turn to the back of the book to mark corrections.  I believe she sent her book back to the publishers after teaching from it, with her corrections.  It was the first time I ever saw a book be corrected, which I thought it was very cool.

Ms. Land was also a god’s send to me.  English was one of my favorite subjects.  The year before I had had Mrs. Coles.  She was a freaking nightmare.  While others loved her, and still love her to this day, I saw her for the monster she was.

I was one of her favorite people to pick on.  My favorite example is one day we had a report do.  I had forgotten mine at home.  Something I usually didn’t do.  Mrs. Coles calls me to the front of the class to public embarrass me.  She says, “What’s wrong with you Ilsa!?  Did you forget ½ your brain this morning??!”

Ever quick on my feet I respond with, “Yes, Mrs. Coles, I did.  I got up this morning, put in ½ my brain in, to you know get dressed and stuff, but I was running late for the bus, and I don’t know I guess I just forgot to put in the other half this morning.”  The class erupted in laughter and applause.  Mrs. Coles gritted her teeth and told me to sit down.  She had been bested by a student and she didn’t like it.

I was to have her for 11^th grade English, English 3 they called it.  She was the only teacher for it.  But the joke was still on her.  Mom and I walked into my principles office and I told him point blank, “I refuse to take her.  She is abusive and I will not take her class.  And you will find me some other way to take English 3.”  He was a bit taken aback at being spoken to so strongly by a student, but with the full support of my parents he had to listen to me.  He found me a correspondence course, which I did by mail through LSU.  It took me a year to do it, but I passed. 

Ilsa