Rice and beans, day 100: Father's Day

When I was young, my dad was a celebrity in our town. People said hi to him everywhere we went, and if we were out without him and someone learned he was my father, they often expressed envy. He'd even had his picture in the paper. 

He was The Science Teacher with the Snakes. 

(Photo of my dad in his early 30s, holding a boa constrictor with one hand and a baby with the other. The baby is reaching a hand toward the snake's head.)

He was also--I suspect from the stories I heard and one memorable day where I hung out in his classroom after kindergarten--the sort of strict-but-entertaining-and-fair teacher I loved most, although I never attended a school where he taught. 

Adult former students and parents of students greeted him cheerfully. Current and recent students said hi, but seemed stunned that teachers existed outside of school, which my siblings and I found highly amusing. 

One of the things I appreciated most about my dad was that he was remarkably unconcerned about grades. From a young age, I knew about his high school French class, where he got an A the first quarter and an F the second quarter, because he knew that would give him a C, which was good enough for his purposes. 

I don't even remember him focusing on whether I had done my best, which is a loaded question for a bright procrastinator with perfectionist tendencies. 

Instead, the question was, "Did you learn something?" And since the answer to that was always yes--even if what I had learned was that yes, my geometry teacher would expect me to take the test I missed the Friday before spring break on the very first day back so no, my decision to procrastinate studying was not a good one--the actual grades were a non-issue.

I do remember being sent or called to him for disciplining on a handful of occasions. I don't remember what I had done, although I'm fairly certain it involved being disrespectful to my mom or mistreating one of my siblings. The "discipline" consisted of looking in Dad's eyes and knowing that I'd done wrong, that he knew it, and that he had expected better of me. And that was it. He was not the sort to remember the bad behavior or bring it up again. 

 I feel very blessed to have him as my father.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!