A trip down memory lane

So because my sleep schedule has really been screwy lately, last night, I lay on my bed trying to sleep at 2am and my mind drifted to middle school and high school...

Disclaimer: this might be a long post that has absolutely no meaning for you and perhaps you won't understand the meaning it has for me. That's ok :). Feel free to skim and skip through :).

Now if you had asked me even as recently as 3 years ago about my high school and middle school experience, I would have had nothing good to say. I would have been able to talk freely about my negative, hurtful experiences but if you wanted me to tell you about something positive, I don't think I could have come up with anything. However, last night as I lay on my bed, memory after memory of high school and middle school washed over me. Good memories. Wonderful memories. Happy memories. Memories that made me smile and nostalgic for once.

What sparked this? Well, one of the youth members at my old church in Knoxville just graduated from my alma mater high school back in Knoxville. She had posted pictures of her last few days at school and browsing through them is probably what triggered my memories.

So this post is a post of my memories. My positive memories about middle school and high school that I want to remember forever. Whether or not you learn something about me, this post and these memories are significant to me because what once was a period of time that I wanted to forget in my life has now been redeemed in a sense. It's become positive and it's now a part of me. A part of me that I now cherish. It's significant. So here goes:

I'll start with probably the most significant person in my middle school and high school life: Mrs. Litherland.

She was (and still is!) the head librarian at our school and because of her, the library was probably my favorite place on the whole campus (and trust me, the campus is pret-ty big). A petite woman with short black hair and a face that smiled all over, she just exuded passion, energy, and excitement. Coming in totally new 8th grade year was tough. I was shy so I was slow about making friends (especially with people who had seemingly grown up with each other). So I turned to books. I LOVED to read and Mrs. Litherland was one of the nicest librarians I've ever known. She was SO PASSIONATE about her books. She introduced every single book as if it was a close friend. I would read tons of books every single week and every day, I would just pop into her office for more. She always had a rack in her office of new books that had just come in and hadn't even been shelved yet. I always felt so special when she would tell me that she had reserved a book for me right as it came in just cause she knew I would love it. She never got tired of me and was always so happy to see me. And I'm sure my own classmates would vouch that everywhere you saw me, I had my nose buried in a book. I miss Mrs. Litherland and I'm so glad she's still there. I would love to go back and visit her and tell her thank you.

Note: not all of these will be a paragraph. I just loved (still do!) Mrs. Litherland.

I guess I'll go in chronological order. As for middle school, in 8th grade...
Mrs. Henry was the science teacher. A thin woman with medium brown hair and a rather outspoken voice, she was an interesting lady...in a you-don't-always-know-if-she's-living-in-the-present kind of way lol. But she gave me my biggest surprise in middle school: She was the first (and only) teacher that ever openly expressed her concern about me skipping lunch (cause I feared going to the cafeteria). One day, out of the blue, I was reading in the hallway (as I usually did) and Mrs. Henry was coming back from lunch, she turned and asked me, "Jessica, do you ever eat lunch?" I was so taken aback by her statement I had to make something up on the spot. I think I said something lame like I wasn't hungry and I ate something after school or something like that. I'll always remember her for that. She did her duty as a person and as a teacher to care for her students. She didn't have to ask me that, but I appreciate that she thought about it and did so.

Let's see...Mr. Mitchell was the American History teacher. Mr. Hinton had been the geography teacher (and he also happened to be the girls' JV basketball coach so I saw more of him outside of the classroom. Yep, started "playing" b-ball in 8th grade lol. As much as a puny chinese girl could :)). He was an ok person. Kinda boring though :P.
Took French from Mrs. Eastwood, a loud, tall lady with glasses that in the end, reminded me of a grandma, started out as kind of intimidating actually (being so loud and all). But in the end, I really enjoyed her class and she really liked me and believed in me. She slowly saw my personality outside of being just the smart quiet girl in class and she grew to really like me. That happened to be the case with most of my teachers. I grew on them lol. At first, they would always say that I was too quiet and never participated much, but as the years went on and as I grew to like them and open up more to them, they grew to like me too.
That's mainly all I remember about middle school.

High school...let's see.
Mrs. Kile - 9th grade biology teacher. Her husband taught too but I never had a class with him. HE was the interesting character though. He always wore a bolo tie and it was the first time I had EVER seen somebody wear one. Anyways, in Mrs. Kile's class, one of the most memorable moments was when she dissected a pregnant cat cadaver right in front of us. THAT was interesting.

Mr. Livingston - 9th grade Honors World History teacher. Tall, thin, man with thin gray hair and big thick round glasses. Kinda reminds me of a nice, wise turtle :). My first history class as a 9th grader and it was sooo boring! But I liked him as a person! And he liked me too...for some odd reason lol. I remember my final research paper in his class was about the Chinese tradition of foot binding.

Mrs. Pennington (or Mrs. P as we all called her) - my Honors English teacher in 9th grade. She was hands down the most loud and crazy teacher I have ever had. One that reveled in breaking the rules and always had a mischievous wink when she looked your way. And whenever she winked at you, you always knew that she was going to do something funny or outrageous and whatever it was, it was going to knock your socks off. We read some of my favorite books here too: To Kill A Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, One Flew over the Cuckoo's nest (we got to watch the movie too! Great movie btw), The Great Gatsby (LOVE F. Scott Fitzgerald!), Lord of the Flies (another favorite!), Huck Finn, etc. And yes, she is the mother of Chad Pennington (NFL quarterback for the Miami Dolphins right now). She used to show us pictures of the bruises Chad would get in his football games. Bruises that took up his whole leg. That was crazy! His dad is the assistant football coach at Webb. I didn't like him as much as Mrs. P :P.
Ok, I'm gonna get a little out of order now and just start naming teachers that I stick out to me...

Mr. Koh - Jit Koh. my trig teacher junior year. Man, he had the craziest Albert-Einstein hairstyle going on. It was awesome! And he had the funniest accent and the best part about it, was that it also had a hint of southern in it. And he didn't care. He didn't care what people thought about him and he also had the some of the weirdest notions about the world, about people, etc. It was cool though since it set him apart from all the other teachers and I'll definitely never forget him lol.

Mrs. Gutridge - honors algebra II. She was so funny. She reminded me of a grandma that resembled big bird. A big smile, glasses at the edge of her nose with short dark curls on top of her head.

Mr. Gregory - AP Calc. I probably didn't learn a thing in this class but I definitely had fun! He's a kid at heart and he definitely loves his students. His classroom door was always open and he was always welcoming and willing to engage in any conversation with the students. A bunch of us math geeks would always hang out in his classroom and just chill during our study periods. He was such a chill guy.

Dr. Cox - sophomore Honors English. One of the most challenging english teachers I'd had (especially after having Mrs. P) but we all loved him. Unfortunately, he only taught like 2 years before he moved with his wife :(. Sad. But I thoroughly enjoyed his class. And he was my only "teacher crush" ever in my life lol. Yes, he was married but for some reason, I had a tiny crush on him! It was nothing major of course. We read some of my favorite books in his class: Beloved by Toni Morrisson, The Scarlet Letter, Frankenstein, My Antonia (by Willa Cather), As I Lay Dying and Light in August (by William Faulkner. This is when I fell in love with Faulkner. Difficult read but I love him nonetheless), Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad..."The horror! The horror!"), etc.

Mr. Day (aka Coach Day) - AP English Language junior year. He was from "Bah-ston" and man, we made fun of his accent :). J/k. Well, he made fun of it himself! He's the one that said, "Pahk the cah in hahvad yahd". We didn't make him say it! He was a really cool dude though and coach of the men's basketball team. And I was pleasantly surprised at having enjoyed his teaching. I really fell in love with Shakespeare's Henry V under his teaching. And I fell in love with medieval literature too. Yeah, he was a guy that surprised me cause he had a tough, cool, calm and collected exterior but surprisingly was able to instill excellence and passion in his students and in his basketball team. IT was an interesting combination and learning experience.

Mr. Heiser - Coach of the cross-country girls team and also AP English Lit and I also had him for an english course on fantasy literature (which was by far my favorite course in my entire high school and middle school career). I would say Mr. Heiser was probably my favorite English teacher and the teacher that managed to push my writing and way of looking at literature to a whole other level. He is notorious for being really tough on students and so I was sooo scared to get him senior year! But then (as it often is with a lot of his students) we end up loving him. He got his degree from Harvard yet he wasn't snobby about it. He loved the students and he just came across as a really really great teacher of literature. We got to read James and the Giant Peach, Harry Potter, Crime and Punishment, A Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Dreams of my Russian Summer, Prayer for Owen Meany, Love Medicine, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, etc. He was one of the teachers that if he gave me a compliment in class (and believe me, those were rare! Out of both my semesters in 2 of his classes, I've only gotten 3 compliments from him in class) about the way I was interpreting literature, I knew it was a true compliment and it definitely felt really good.
*sigh* I miss english class...when reading was so much fun :P.

Mr. Lafon - Ethics, World religion class, community service, etc. Him and his wife are the most laidback, non-intimidating people I've ever met. And also the oddest looking couple because she's really short and he's really tall. She's got long brown hair braided down her back. He's got glasses, tall (with horrible posture. But he played b-ball I believe), with dark hair in a bowl cut lol. I babysat for their guinea pigs once when they were out of town. LOL. Good times :)

Mr. Brown - good ol' Bob Brown. AP Chem. Chem was always quite boring to me so I fell asleep in his class a lot but he was really good-natured about it. I remember 2 things about his class. 1) He always had this woodpecker toy bird that dipped its beak in the water after about 3 swings. I would always stare at it in class when I was bored (which was often). 2) There was this one time when we were all probably really tired and out of it (it was probably after lunch). He was teaching on the board and then all of a sudden, he stopped, and drew big empty fish eyes staring out of the board and told us that that's what our expressions were at that moment. LOL. I will remember that forever :P.

Dr. Banker - AP US history. One of my favorite classes of all time (coming in a close second to Dr. Heiser's english classes). He is the only teacher that has ever made me make sense of US History and also love studying it. He is one of the smartest people I've ever met and because he was smart and studied history, he's one of those people you knew had a bit of a rebel in him. Him and Jit Koh were like peas in a pod in that regard. Never quite conformed to everyone else's expectations and thoughts and were happy to be that controversial voice. He's the sole reason I got a 5 on the AP US history exam. Without him, I never would have been able to do so. I remember the day of 9/11, the school convened us in the auditorium after we had all seen the news. They invited Dr. Banker up to speak and I was blown away. He spoke about how the U.S. would no longer feel invincible from then on, how the oceans that separated us had been bridged, etc. Only he could have given such a wonderfully articulated and reflective speech in such short notice. He also used to take naps during the lunch break. 2 of my friends and I would see him lying on the floor behind his desk :). I always thought the floor looked awfully uncomfortable though :P. Oh and he had this nickname for my 2 friends and I. My nickname was Butch, the other 2 were Sundance, and the Kid. lol :). Of course, the names were the exact opposite of what we were. I loved Dr. Banker. He taught me more than U.S. history. He was a very inspirational teacher.

Frank Daniel or Frank as we called him - the bookstore manager. I remember him cause he's like that personable restaurant owner that knows everybody's name once he sees them. At first loud and intimidating but he grew on me and I miss going into his bookstore :). Cause it felt like HIS and not just "the school's". And he always knew what you were looking for before you even told him and he loved to help.

Mme Barry and Mme Doucette were my French teachers. Mme Barry had that French fashion going for her. Weird colored tights, a buzz cut, lots of dangling jewely, black clothes, glasses. Thin. Very chic :). With a very sing-song-y voice too. And Mme Doucette was the exact opposite lol.

And even though I didn't take German, I'll always remember the German teacher cause she had really really long hair that reached to past her back.

And last but not least, I must mention Coach Collier. My basketball coach for 2 years. The most driven and strong woman I've ever met. She had 4 children in 4 years. All girls (her husband wanted a boy and they were trying!). But she singlehandedly built our girl's basketball program into what it is today. From bottom of the heap to state champs in 4 years. She's a regular Pat Summitt (She played as point guard under Pat Summitt and their team won the National Championship that year in '89. So no wonder she's hard core huh? :P). and I learned a lot from her (not just basketball, although she did instill in me hardcore basketball fundamentals that I still remember to this day) but about perseverance, self-confidence, discipline, and just never giving up. I do regret quitting playing for her. She was a good person once you got past the rough and tough exterior (and her girls were the cutest!). Goodness, her children are probably all grown now! *sigh*

I also remember having to give "chapel talks" in high school. Talks that every student had to give (in front of the whole student body including faculty). Freshmen were exempt (they watched wide-eyed and frightened as they feared next year). sophomores had to give a 2-3min talk, juniors were 5min and I think seniors were 10min. I remember giving my junior year talk on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (the movie) lol. I don't remember what my other talks were.

Oh and I was also a Webb ambassador - meaning I gave tours, etc. to prospective students. I loved Webb (even though it was known as the snobby private school) but I really enjoyed being an ambassador. I wish I continued that at Case (because I love Case even more)...

I still remember which locker I had each year. Strange huh? :)

Anyways, that's it. That's a trip to middle school and high school and back. I enjoyed the ride. And if you made it this far, I hope you did too.