American History

If all of my teachers had been as unconventional and interesting as my American history teacher at Orange Glen High in the spring of 1969 I would have gone to school a lot more often...

For one thing - he seemed to be just as bewildered and amused by the French as I am... My sentiments came from my interactions with a French classmate at Aloisiuskolleg in Germany. His came from being a student of history:
He told us about Roland Garros (the WWI flying ace): The French had experimented with a mechanical gun interrupter (to prevent you from shooting off your own propeller) but it didn't work reliably... Yeah - in order to do that you have to have a gun that fires predictably - we're talking French engineering here :-) So Garros came up with the idea of also bolting metal plates on the backs of the propeller blades. Of course, you couldn't control where the ricocheting bullets went, but "C'est la guerre", right?
And he also told us about those early WWI battles when the French thought they could intimidate the Germans by running fixed bayonet charges at their entrenched machine gun positions while wearing bright red pants and shouting "Elan!"... The result was 140,000 French casualties in less than a week - but you had to admire their spirit :-)

He was also the first one of my teachers to dispute the textbook accounts of our "heroic" battles against the Native American population in the late 1800's... (Note that this was before the book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was published...)
And his coverage of WWII was stunning... He never expressed any anti-war sentiments but he made sure we understood exactly what "war" meant... He showed us extremely graphic film clips of atrocities and carnage... Heads being blown apart - burning bodies. It was horrific - the kind of stuff that gives you nightmares... I don't think any high school teacher could get away with it these days. The parents would not be happy :-)

But it was the first time during my school days when I felt like I was being treated as an adult rather than being fed a load of crap - it was totally awesome... (Bitchen, righteous, tubular, gnarly??)

Of course - there's a "girl story" associated with this class too. (Not surprising, right?)
I sat near the left rear corner of the class - and sitting in the opposite rear corner was this petite blond girl whose name I no longer recall... She seemed to have the same general attitude towards school that I had - plus she was kind of cute and I kind of liked her...

One day as we were leaving class she came up beside me and said "Hi!"... And I totally ignored her... She tried to get my attention a couple of more times - did everything but grab me... And I continued to ignore her - she finally gave up...
At the time I had no idea what panic disorder was - let alone that I suffered from it... All I knew is that I was so terrified of saying the wrong thing that I couldn't force myself to say anything at all...

It wasn't until afterward that it occurred to me that she might have been afraid to approach me. That she was taking a risk - and I might have really hurt and embarrassed her... That thought made me absolutely sick to my stomach. Hardly a day went by that I didn't think about apologizing to her and trying to explain - but I just couldn't...

Yeah - it probably wasn't that big of a deal - she probably just decided I was a jerk - and forgot about it not long afterward... But I've been carrying the guilt around ever since... (Just like that Paulette vs cheeseburger thing.)
Most people seem to be able to easily "let go" of things like that... I can't - and I have mixed feelings about that. One one hand it sucks carrying around all that baggage. On the other hand I try really hard to avoid doing anything I might regret...

Still - sometimes you just can't avoid "stepping in it" :-)