(9/12/2011)
Above is a drawing of this ‘instructor’ that I drew on L.S.D. in the 11th grade. I took artistic license for this composition and gave him fingers and ears, fingers, so I that could portray him making a fist.
Using either your intuition, or your analytical mind, it would be a reasonable conclusion to make that if I went through the trouble of doing his portrait while fried, that he must have made some sort of impression on my, then young, mind. You’d be absolutely right in this assumption, because he really freaked me out!
He was my ‘composition’ teacher in 11th grade, fifth period, right after lunch, after many of the students smoked dope either (according to their stations) in their cars or under the bleachers.
He got shot down in a bomber in the Korean conflict and was badly burned up in the mishap. The flesh on his face and hands looked like melted wax, most of the outside of his nose as well as his ears were incinerated by this unfortunate event. He had no fingers on his hands, retaining only the smallest of nubs in their place with which to do the things many of us take for granted.
Apparently, not surprisingly, he lost his eyelashes as well, judging by how they cleverly grafted straight hairs from some other part of his body to serve him as such.
From what he said, I am lead to believe he had a young, attractive wife, though who really knows. I don’t think that, in this internet age, I should have to mention that people say all kinds of things.
He certainly didn’t work very hard teaching us, in fact, he frequently crowed about what a sweet deal it was in that, between what he ‘earned’ as a teacher combined with the government pension, which I doubt anyone would dare argue that he did EARN, and then some for having suffered so much at the hands of the enemy, he repeatedly professed that he cleared quite a comfortable income. I also gathered he spent his evenings hooked up to a dialysis machine, though I’m not sure exactly why, but it was as a result of this same incident which nearly cost him his life.
He would give us writing assignments which we were all based from his own particularly sordid experiences.
There was one where we were to suppose we were on an airplane which was destined to crash, killing all on board, save one, and we were to write a composition on what reasons we would present to justify our being spared from the fate of everybody else on board. I have absolutely no recollection of what claim I had made in mine.
In another that I recall, he wanted us to write about whether we felt it was always important to tell the truth. He told us he thought not, and that in some cases it may be best be not to, in order to spare the tender feelings of others. By way of example, he told us he had been on television talking about his experiences related to his bomber being shot down, and the subsequent crash. He told us that after the interview aired, a woman contacted him and wanted to know if her son, who had been among the crew of that plane, had died an instantaneous, painless death in the crash. He told us he lied to her and told her he was sure his demise had completely taken her son by surprise. He then told us, “Should I have told her the truth, that he slowly died screaming his guts out in pain as the plastic of the ball-turret around him melted, as he roasted like a weenie?”
I can’t right now recall any more of these fun assignments, but I think you all get the general picture and can see what a barrel of laughs his guy was.
As for his opinions concerning me, I never got the impression they were very favorable. Once when, as usual, all the other students were making remarks that implied I was crazy, Mr. Lint put in his two cents worth in saying, “Naw, Tweedie’s got all his marbles.” Most of his other comments and quips about me implied he thought I was a homosexual. I’m pretty sure he got that opinion from watching that television show which has never had a problem with sacrificing my personal reputation on the altar of any current trend, or maybe it has something to do with his military background, and he just felt that creative people were all fruity or something.
Loof Lirpa 