2000-05-06
Dear Diary:

����We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a news flash.

����All those years of hauling buckets of frog eggs up here from his mother's pond has finally paid off. Last night Paul heard his first spring peepers out in our own pond. Oh bliss, oh thrills and a couple of raptures!

����I had to tease him about it, of course and so I made up some sort of nonsense song about the joy of peepers to the tune of "Hooray for Captain Spaulding". Now I can't get that darn tune out of my head. Oh botheration.

����If you're not a Marxist, and I would be talking about the Groucho school of Marxism, then you don't have a clue what I would be talking about here. Never mind. Just move along. There's nothing to see here.

����I can't think of Groucho and not think of my Grade 11 homeroom and later Grade 12 history teacher, James Dean. It's been 30 years since I left high school and he's the only teacher I can remember now from those years. But then I think he's probably the only free spirit I've ever known in my life.

����Normally history teachers are on the dorky side, but Mr. Dean was idolized by the guys in my school; they all wanted to grow up to be like him.

����He spent the summers on his sailboat in Lake Erie, drove a zippy little TR-7 sports car, was single, and when he turned up at any sort of school event where female companionship might be necessary, he brought the kind of woman you didn't bring home to momma. Ooooh lah lah.

����Lots of the folks who end up in teaching are there because what they really wanted to do didn't pan out for some reason. Teaching was their fallback position, not their avocation. We've all endured these folks.

����Mr. Dean lived to teach and he charged into the classroom as if each day might be his last. Which isn't surprising, I suppose, because he had leukemia and had already lived far longer than most men his age did with that disease back then.

����He had nothing to lose, so he chose to live his life in overdrive and ignore what anyone might think of him. There were a lot of parents who did not approve.

Mr. Dean from my old high school yearbook during a pep rally. ����Mr. Dean's specialty was Russian history so during high school pep rallies he assumed the character of Deanskoi. Funny, irreverent, smart ... some souls just burn themselves into your retina.

����I never did get to follow the whole Russian history course with him because he died late that fall, just a few months into the school term. Oh God, this sounds so sad, but it wasn't.

����He had lived far longer than his doctors predicted, he made sure he enjoyed the time he had, and he knew that he had made a difference in the lives of many of the kids who crossed his path.

����There's a clich� out there about thinking outside the box. Mr. Dean was the first history teacher I ever had who forced me to do that, who would not accept a rote regurgitation of dates and facts. He made me realize that the same event can be looked at many ways, and that there's not just one true history.

����"So what's the connection between Mr. Dean and Groucho?" I can hear you asking. Patience, my dears, we're almost there.

����Before he went into the hospital in London for his final round of chemo, he left my class a history quiz. It was multiple choice and the last question was:

����Who wrote the Communist Manifesto?

����a) Karl Marx

����b) Chico Marx

����c) Harpo Marx

����d) Groucho Marx

����It was Groucho, right? I mean, he WAS the smart brother, eh ...

--Marn

Old Drivel - New Drivel


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