My favorite teachers in my middle school were: Mr. John Gingles, 8th grade Earth
Science; Deb Land, 9th grade English; and Coach Dale Morvan, 8th
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 8th 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 8th
grade English teacher. She was not, but
I have still kept her in this article.
She was in fact my 9th 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 9th 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 11th 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
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