May 22, 1999.  Forgetting makes remembering sweeter. (#219)

~ Greg Dennison ~ Leave a comment

The crowd at Saint Mary Park was fairly sparse when I arrived that day, which I saw as a good thing because I found crowds difficult to deal with sometimes.  The park was more like a small plaza tucked among tall buildings in the grid of streets in downtown Capital City.  On one side of the plaza was a commercial shopping street that at some point in the city’s history had been closed to motor vehicles, with light rail trains running down the middle of the street.  The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, where two of my concerts with University Chorus were held, was a few blocks to the east, along this pedestrians-only street.  To the west of St. Mary Park was a two-story outdoor shopping mall, the product of a downtown realization effort that had happened several years before I moved to this area.  I had been to that mall before; there was a game store there where I bought my copy of Catan, or as it was called back in the ’90s before it was mainstream enough to be sold in general stores, The Settlers of Catan.

I had made the drive across the Drawbridge from Jeromeville on that hot morning to attend the Under Heaven Festival, an all day exhibition of Christian music and art across two downtown parks.  My friend Darius Curtis from church had some friends from another church who were involved in planning this event, and I had also heard about it from the email list of Carolyn C. Parry, a friend from University Chorus who had graduated and was now performing small shows throughout the region and would be performing here later this afternoon.  

As I walked across the mall toward St. Mary Park, I heard music getting gradually louder.  The mall was not busy, but not completely empty either.  When I arrived at the park, a four-piece band I did not know was playing a song I did not recognize, but they sounded pretty good.  The festival had begun about half an hour ago. I did not make much of an effort to get there right on time, since the artists I actually wanted to see were all playing later.

I saw an information booth at the edge of the park.  “Can I help you?” a volunteer asked as I walked up.

Looking at the table at the information booth, I said, “Can I get a program?”

“Sure,” he replied, taking a folded 8 ½-by-11 inch page off of a stack.  The paper had a schedule of performers, and a map showing the two parks and the four block walking route in between.

I then pointed at a pile of black t-shirts and asked, “Do you have one in extra large?”

“We sure do,” he said, holding up a shirt in my size.  The front said “uh!” in large lower case letters.  Clever, I thought.  The initials of “Under Heaven” spelled “uh,” like the sound people made when they were trying to think of something.  The volunteer turned the shirt over to show me the back, which said in much smaller printing, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.  Acts 4:12.”  I gave him the money, rolled up the shirt, and stuffed it into the side pocket of the cargo shorts I was wearing.  It would be wrinkled the first time I wore it, but that was no big deal; I would wear it around the house the first time and then wash and dry it properly.

When that band finished playing, I walked to the other stage at Ninth Street Plaza.  I gradually heard the music from the St. Mary stage recede into the background, followed by an equally gradual crescendo of the music from the Ninth Street stage.  The band playing there, another one that I had never heard of, was much louder and heavier than the band playing at St. Mary Park.  They finished a song, and the singer approached the microphone, motioning for the crowd to quiet down and listen.  “I wrote this song one day when I was deep in prayer, and I was just overwhelmed thinking about how much God loves each and every one of us, and I wanted to just praise his name and sing of his love.”  His band began playing loud, high-energy hard rock as he screamed unintelligible words into the microphone.  I wondered exactly how one would learn of God’s love through unintelligible screams.

At the opposite end of the Ninth Street Plaza from the stage were three temporary shade pavilions.  According to the program, this was the art exhibit.  This event called itself an art and music festival, and I was curious about what the art would look like.  I saw a very well done painting of Jesus hanging on the cross, his face showing detail of the anguish his physical body must have been going through.  Next to this was a simple but effective sculpture of two men embracing, meant to represent the Prodigal Son returning to his father.  As I walked through that tent full of paintings and sculptures, I thought about how visual art could bring glory to God the same way that music did.  Each one of these artists used their creations to do just that, as had many classical artists throughout history.

A little before three o’clock, I walked back to St. Mary Park.  Carolyn, my friend from chorus, was playing there next.  When I arrived at the stage, Carolyn was just beginning the first song of her set, “Seasons Change,” the title track of her CD.  I thought that song was appropriate for this time in my life, and with Carolyn having just finished her degree as well, it was appropriate for hers too.  A guy I did not know was on stage with her, accompanying Carolyn’s vocals and acoustic guitar with some sort of hand drum.  At one point during the show, she played a song with a male backing vocal, and the drummer sang this part.  I never heard his name, but I wondered if he was the same guy who sang the backing vocal on the album recording.

I had seen Carolyn perform once before, at the Spring Picnic last month on campus, and I bought her CD at that show.  Today, she performed most of the songs on the CD, in addition to a couple of new ones she had been working on.  She did not say anything about if or when she would release another CD, but if it sounded anything like this, I would buy it.

After she finished, I walked toward the stage, and I waved when she looked up and saw me.  “Greg!” she said.  “Thanks for coming out!  Are you enjoying all the other bands?”

“So far,” I said.  “How have you been?”

“Good!  What about you?”

“Not bad.  I got a job for next year!”

“You did?  Congratulations!  Teaching math, right?”

“Yes!  At Jorgensen High School, next to Tyler Air Force Base.”

“Good!  That’s not too far away.”

“Yeah.  I’m gonna stay in Jeromeville and commute.”

“Greg!” I heard a familiar male voice say behind me.  “You know the singer?”

“Yeah,” I said, turning around to see Darius.  “This is Carolyn.  She went to Jeromeville, and we were in chorus together.  Carolyn, this is Darius.  He goes to church with me at Jeromeville Covenant.  And he has an older sister who lived downstairs from me in the dorm freshman year.”

“Nice to meet you!” Carolyn replied, smiling at Darius.  “I need to get my stuff put away, but it was good talking to you!”

“Yes!” I replied.  “Enjoy the rest of your weekend!”

Darius turned to me and asked, “Have you heard this next guy up?”

“No,” I said.  I looked at the program and read the next performer’s name.  “Justin McRoberts.  I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

“He’s from somewhere near Bay City.  I think it’s just going to be him and an acoustic guitar.  My friend has his CD, and it’s really good.  Raw and authentic music for Jesus.”

“I see.”

“Are you having fun?”

“Yes!  I just wonder why this wasn’t better publicized.  I didn’t hear anything about it at church.  I didn’t hear anything about it at JCF.  I heard you talking about it, and I’m on Carolyn’s email list and I saw this gig in an email, but that’s it.”

“Yeah.  I think it’s because it’s their first time putting this on, and they haven’t really figured out all those details.”

“That makes sense,” I said.  “And maybe because it’s in Capital City, they didn’t advertise it as heavily in Jeromeville.  Even though Jeromeville and Cap City are only like ten miles apart, Jeromeville feels like a different world sometimes.”

“That could be too.”

I heard chords strumming from the stage a couple minutes later.  I looked up; the guy on stage strumming his guitar was a young guy in a t-shirt and jeans, probably in his mid- to late 20s.  “Hi,” he said into the microphone.  “I’m Justin McRoberts.”  He began playing and singing right after that.

Justin’s singing voice was much louder than his speaking voice.  Justin was a talented singer, and if he wrote all of these songs himself, a talented songwriter as well. Maybe he would be another artist I would have to start paying attention to.


After Justin’s set, I walked back to the Ninth Street stage and watched a couple more bands that I did not know.  I did not particularly like either of them.  I wandered back to the St. Mary stage early in the evening, when the sun was low in the sky and much of the area around the downtown buildings was in shadow.  I made a plan earlier to come back to St. Mary Park for the final two artists playing at this stage, Sherri Youngward and Sarah Masen, because I recognized both of their names.  Every year, the youth pastor from J-Cov made a mix tape of Christian music to hand out to the students, called the Edge Mix.  Sherri Youngward and Sarah Masen each had a song on Edge Mix ’97.

Sherri was just taking the stage as I arrived.  Her music was mostly soft and slow, with thoughtful lyrics.  She played the song I knew about halfway through the show.  The lyrics were based on that passage in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus says that by taking care of the lowly, we take care of him.  I could not remember the title of the song; it was one of those songs where the title was something seemingly unrelated that did not appear in the lyrics.  She played for about an hour, and I applauded after her set finished.

After Sherri finished playing, some crew people began taking down her stuff, and others set up for Sarah Masen.  Her set was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock, and surprisingly, the festival was not running much behind schedule.  Back in 1999, I was still new to the world of concerts, so I did not fully appreciate at the time that the most well-known artist usually played last.  Sarah Masen was not exactly a superstar in 1999, but I had actually heard of her, unlike most of the artists here today, and she was a nationally touring artist, whereas many of the others were local to this part of the United States.

Although I had not heard much of Sarah’s music, I had seen her first self-titled CD in the church music library, and I knew approximately what she looked like from the cover photo.  The woman who walked on stage as the crowd cheered was definitely Sarah Masen, but she did not look like what I expected from the picture on the CD case.  She had cut her hair short in a pixie cut at some point in the years since that photo on the CD case was taken, and she also appeared to be pregnant.  Sarah sat down and awkwardly put a guitar on her lap in front of her baby bump.

“How is everyone tonight?” she said into the microphone.  The crowd cheered again, and by the time the crowd stopped, Sarah was strumming on the guitar.  She began singing a song I did not recognize, something about seasons changing.  I found it strangely appropriate that both Sarah and Carolyn had sung songs about the seasons changing, especially now when my season of life was about to change.  Maybe this was God’s message that everything I was going through was normal and part of his plan.

“I’m a little rusty,” she said after the song ended.  Gesturing toward her belly, she explained, “My husband and I are expecting our first child in September.”  The crowd cheered as she continued, “I’ve been taking a break, just playing a few shows here and there.”  I wondered how the organizers of this event had managed to get her to come all the way to Capital City for this show, especially while pregnant.  Did someone have a personal connection?  Did they just contact as many artists as they could and see who replied?  I never did find out.

As Sarah played more songs, I looked at her and noticed that she looked younger than I expected, probably just a few years older than me at the most.  (I would learn later that I was correct; she was 24 years old at the time.)  She was already married and pregnant, but marrying and starting families young was fairly common for Christians.

Sarah had a distinct voice, high and soft like some of the girl rockers that were popular at the time, but different in her own way that was hard to describe.  A few songs into the set, she played the more upbeat song “All Fall Down,” the one song of hers I knew.  It sounded different from the way I knew it; I realized that this was because today, she was just sitting on stage alone with a guitar, and in the album recording I was familiar with, she had a backup band.

After that, Sarah said, “This next song is on the new album.  I have it here for sale, and I’ll be at the table signing CDs after the show if you want.  It’s called ‘Tears Like Flowers.’”  She began playing, and about a minute into the song, she kept strumming the same chord for several seconds.  Finally, she stopped playing and said, sheepishly, “I forgot the words.  It must be pregnancy brain.”  As the crowd laughed, a crew member quickly scurried on stage holding what appeared to be the booklet from the CD; Sarah turned a few pages and began singing again.  That was definitely a first for me, seeing an artist forget the words in the middle of the show.

By the end of the show, I had decided I was going to buy the CD, and get it signed.  The way she said “the new album” made it sound like this was a more recent release than the one that had All Fall Down on it.  I liked this music.  Having grown up in the kind of environment where young boys were mercilessly made fun of by their classmates for doing anything feminine, I was self-conscious sometimes about liking music by women.  I was starting to get over this, since the people around me now were not like that, and I had bought Sixpence None the Richer’s CD recently, so I was just going to ignore what anyone might have thought about me and buy Sarah’s CD.  The skies had turned dark by the time she announced that the next song would be her last one.  She also reminded the crowd again that she would be signing autographs after the show.

When she finished, I wandered nervously to the merchandise table.  I never seemed to know how to act when meeting someone slightly famous.  Should I just act naturally, as if I had known Sarah forever?  Should I tell her how much I love her music?  Did it matter that I only knew one of her songs before today?  I still had not planned in my mind what to say by the time I reached the front of the line.

“Hi!” Sarah said, looking me right in the eye and smiling. 

“I really enjoyed the show,” I said.  “I only knew one song before today, but I really liked what I heard.  And don’t worry about forgetting the lyrics.”

She laughed.  “That’s never happened before!  I promise!  I swear, this pregnancy is getting to me.”

“Could be.  It makes the performance feel more authentic, I guess.”

“That’s a good way to look at it.”

I picked up the CD and asked, “Can you sign it?”  I was correct in that this was not the album that had All Fall Down.  I would have to buy that one now too, but apparently I would have to find it somewhere else.

“Of course!” Sarah replied, removing the shrinkwrap and turning to a page in the middle of the CD booklet.  I became curious a few seconds later when I noticed that she was writing something that seemed longer than a typical autograph.  I handed her the money and took back the CD, flipping the booklet open to see what she wrote:

Forgetting makes remembering sweeter.
Sarah Masen

She wrote the M in her last name with the two vertical strokes on the sides angled inward toward each other, meeting at the bottom, so that the M looked like a heart.  Wow.  This no longer seemed like just an autograph so much as a personal message.

“Thank you so much,” I said, turning back to Sarah.

“You’re welcome.  Have a blessed night.”

“You too!”


The Under Heaven Festival did not continue after that first year.  I wondered how much of that had to do with the lack of publicity.  Most of my friends, even those who were very heavily involved in their churches and the type to listen exclusively to Christian music, had not heard about the festival.  The next morning at church, I was talking to Faith, the youth leader intern on staff, about what I had done that weekend, and she had not heard anything about the festival.  She had heard of Sarah Masen, and she was excited to find out that I had met her.

That day was the only time I have ever seen Sarah Masen play live.  Justin McRoberts and Carolyn C. Parry were the only artists from that day I would see again.  That day was also the first of only two times I would see a musician forget the words to her own song in the middle of a show.  The other was Carolyn, about three years later. She admitted to the crowd after strumming the same chord for about ten seconds that she had forgotten the words, and I had the great privilege of saving that show by shouting the next line to her.

I thought about Sarah’s words often as I listened to that CD over and over again during the next few weeks.  Forgetting makes remembering sweeter.  I have found that I sometimes tend to remember the most random details of my life for years, yet other things I forget quickly.  Time passes, and events of life become forgotten and lost until, sometimes, one word, sight, or sound will set off a chain reaction in my brain to bring a torrent of sweet memories flooding back.

I write these stories to keep these memories alive, not only the memories of my personal history, but also more generally, memories of a time that has passed and a world and way of life that passed with it.  Back in 1999, the world felt new and exciting as the Internet emerged as a newly mainstream technology, with the new millennium on the horizon.  But now in 2026, even the world of 1999 with its dialup Internet and a hundred channels of cable television seems quaint and dated.  I remember more of my life in 1999 than most people I know do, but I certainly have forgotten a lot of details.  As I was working on preparing for the next few episodes, I found, buried in a long-ignored folder that I had copied from old computer to new computer many times over the years, copies of monthly newsletter emails that I wrote to stay in touch with my friends.  I will tell more about those newsletters in an upcoming episode, but while reading what I wrote in 1999, I noticed that I had forgotten an important detail of that time of my life.

That spring, about a month before Under Heaven, our landlord needed to know who was staying at our house the following year.  I did not know for sure yet if I would have a job close enough to Jeromeville to commute.  My housemate Brody had a friend ready to take my spot if I would be leaving.  I prayed about it, and I put it in God’s hands, ultimately telling my housemates to give up my spot.  If I got a job close enough to stay in Jeromeville, God would find a place for me to live somehow, even though most rentals in Jeromeville for the fall are taken by March.  Shortly after I got the job offer from Jorgensen, Brody’s friend backed out, so I got to stay at my house another year.  All of the pieces of the story worked out perfectly for me to not have to move that summer.  I had completely forgotten about this until a few days before this writing, and just as Sarah Masen had told me, forgetting about that time that God worked so clearly in my life made the memory that much sweeter.  God continues to work in my life today, and he will for the rest of my life.

Readers: Tell me in the comments about an interesting story about something you forgot and remembered.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

Disclaimer: Justin McRoberts, Sherri Youngward, and Sarah Masen are actual musicians.  I actually did meet Ms. Masen, and a few years later I would meet Mr. McRoberts.  But none of them were involved in the creation of this story.

[Sarah Masen – Seasons Always Change]

May 18-19, 1999.  But you can’t stop the change. (#218)

~ Greg Dennison ~ Leave a comment

The 1977 film Star Wars, written and directed by George Lucas, followed Luke Skywalker’s quest to become a Jedi and learn the ways of the Force, during a rebellion against an authoritarian Galactic Empire. It quickly became wildly popular, leading to the release of more Star Wars films.  The next two movies in the series, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, were released in the early 1980s with the additional subtitles “Episode V” and “Episode VI.”  The original movie was subtitled “Episode IV: A New Hope” in later rereleases.  The numbering started at four because Lucas had intended to make three more movies, explaining the origin of the Empire and Luke Skywalker’s father’s descent into darkness to become the villain Darth Vader.  But for the last sixteen years, no new Star Wars movies had been produced.

Until now.

In the last few years, the collective Star Wars fandom got hints that more was coming.  The three movies were rereleased in theaters, with changes made that more closely matched Lucas’ original vision for the films, unburdened by the limitations of earlier special effects technology.  I had Brian Burr as a roommate that year, and he was a huge Star Wars fan.  He quickly got me hooked.  I had seen the first two, but I had never seen Return of the Jedi until that year.  When I saw it with Brian, that was my first time ever seeing a movie on the day it was released.

As the prequel trilogy entered production over the last few years, more and more hints were given about the cast, the characters’ names, and finally the title of the movie, The Phantom Menace.  I was not sure entirely what that title referred to; those were not words I associated with Star Wars.  I had mostly tried to avoid spoilers; I did not want to know what was going to happen in the movie beforehand.

The opening day of The Phantom Menace was announced some time ago as Friday, May 21, but a few weeks earlier it was announced that the opening would be moved back to Wednesday, May 19, so that the most serious fans could see it during the week, and the more casual fans and those with children in school could see it on the weekend.  Jeromeville had two movie theaters, one with five screens and one with six. The Phantom Menace would only be playing on two screens in Jeromeville, with the earliest showing beginning around nine in the morning.  Nueces, on the other hand, had a brand new sixteen-screen theater just sixteen miles from Jeromeville; this theater would be playing The Phantom Menace on five screens the first day, with the earliest showing beginning at 12:01am, right at the start of May 19.

Back in the 1970s and 80s, serious fans of movies like Star Wars would line up outside, sometimes camping out for days, to make sure to get into the earliest possible showing. These days, the movie theater industry offered more options for buying tickets in advance, and people were allowed to buy up to twelve tickets in advance for this movie, beginning on May 12.  Five of the same guys I watched X-Files with every Sunday, all of whom I met at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, went to Nueces last week late on the night of May 11 to camp out overnight and get as many tickets as possible for all of their friends, so that we would have a huge group going at midnight on opening night.

They got a ticket for me, but this situation presented an interesting logistical challenge.  I had my student teaching every morning at Nueces High School, and it seemed kind of wasteful to get out of a movie in Nueces around two-thirty in the morning, drive all the way home to Jeromeville, have at most three hours of restless poor sleep, then drive all the way back to Nueces for class.  So I came up with a plan to go to the movie theater with a change of clothes for school in the car, and after the movie I would just find a safe-looking parking lot, or a quiet side street, and sleep in the car.  I drove a 1989 Ford Bronco, with plenty of room to sleep in the back if I folded down the back seat.

A few days ago, I mentioned casually to Judy Tracy, my master teacher for the geometry class, my plans to see The Phantom Menace and sleep in the car.  She replied, “Don’t find some random parking lot!  Park in front of my house.  We don’t really have a place for you to sleep inside, but you can come in and eat breakfast with me and my husband before work.”  She wrote down her address and handed it to me.


I arrived at the theater around 10:30 on Tuesday night. A bunch of people were already in line, since the advance tickets being sold were not assigned seats, and they wanted a good seat.  Ajeet Tripathi and Todd Chevallier were right in front of me in line, and I recognized many other people I knew from JCF ahead of us. Eddie Baker and John Harvey.  3 Silver, Marlene Fallon, Lacey Kilpatrick, Randy Smith, Blake Lowry, Tim Walton, and Chelsea Robbins, whose birthday was yesterday.  Seth Huang and Ellie Jo Raymond.  My roommate Jed Wallace, who drove separately since I was not coming straight home.  And many others I either knew or recognized. I got excited as I realized I was actually doing this, going to a midnight opening showing of a movie in a group of literally sixty people.

“You excited, Greg?” Todd asked me when he saw me get in line.

“I think overwhelmed is a better word,” I said.  “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“You and Jed didn’t come together?” he continued, pointing to Jed ahead of us in line.  “Don’t you live together?”

“Right,” I said.  I then explained to him my plan to stay in Nueces and sleep in the car.

“I guess with a big car like yours, that won’t be so bad,” Todd said.

As the night went on, I kept looking as often as I could at people arriving in line, and I noticed that Brianna Johns was not here. Did this mean that she did not like Star Wars, or did she have some scheduling conflict not allowing her to be here?  No big deal, although that meant that there was no way I would be sitting next to her.  Oh well.

“Hey, Greg,” Eddie said, walking back from his spot in line to talk to me.  “So what do you think will happen in the movie?”

“I’m not even trying to speculate,” I answered.  “I’m just going to enjoy this night.”

“That’s a good way to look at it.  Without a lot of expectations going in, then you don’t have as much of a chance of being disappointed.”

“Exactly!”

“I’m glad you could make it.  You got your plans to stay overnight in the car all worked out?”

“Yeah.  My master teacher from Nueces High said I could park the car in front of her house, and come inside for breakfast.”

“That was nice of her!  This isn’t the same school where you got the job, right?”

“Right.  Nueces High didn’t have any openings for a math teacher.  I got a job at Jorgensen High, about five miles that way,” I said, pointing to the south.

“I see.  That’s not a bad commute from Jeromeville.”

“It really isn’t.”

About half an hour before the movie was scheduled to start, the theater staff began letting us in.  The seat I found was near the end of a row about halfway from the door to the screen; the best seats, in the middle of the theater toward the back, had filled up by the time I got inside.  Todd and Ajeet sat to my right, and Jed to my left.  A series of ads ran on the screen as conversations swirled around me, some related to the movie, some not.  Finally the theater darkened as previews for upcoming movies began playing, and the crowd cheered.

As the movie began, the excited, rowdy crowd seemed to cheer for just about everything, and I joined them.  The logo for THX Sound appeared.  “Woooo!!!!”  The logo for Twentieth Century Fox appeared, accompanied by the familiar drumroll and fanfare, segueing into the logo for Lucasfilm.  “Yeaaahhhh!!!!!”  The blue text that opened every Star Wars movie appeared on the screen next: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” “Wooooo!!!!!”  The loudest cheers of all went up with the yellow Star Wars wordmark appearing over a backdrop of stars, just as every other Star Wars movie had begun, followed by the title “Episode I THE PHANTOM MENACE” and scrolling text telling the movie’s backstory.  This text told of a trade blockade of a planet called Naboo and two Jedi being sent to negotiate a settlement.  Sixteen years of anticipation for this movie was about to pay off for a couple hundred people in this room, and while I had not been a big Star Wars fan until recently, I felt the excitement completely that night.

The two Jedi on the Trade Federation ship lowered the hoods that had initially obscured their faces, and another round of cheers went up.  The younger one was Obi-Wan Kenobi, a main character from the original movie, and the older one was named Qui-Gon Jinn.  The Trade Federation had no interest in negotiating; they were communicating with, and taking orders from, a hooded figure named Sidious, who told them to kill the Jedi and invade the planet with a droid army.

I was curious about this Sidious, called Darth Sidious in the promotional material on the Star Wars website.  He looked just like the future Emperor from Return of the Jedi, and the title Darth suggested that he was a Sith Lord, one who had Jedi powers but used them for evil.  But, also according to the same website, the Senator from Naboo was named Palpatine, which was also the future Emperor’s name, and in this movie, Senator Palpatine was played by the same actor who, under heavy makeup, had played the Emperor in Return of the Jedi.  The supposed implication of all this was that Senator Palpatine was secretly the same person as Darth Sidious, and he would become the future Emperor.

The Jedi reported to Queen Amidala about the nonexistent negotiations, and she requested that they accompany her to Coruscant, the capital, so she could tell the Senate in person what was happening.  The Queen, along with her security detail and handmaidens, boarded the Jedi ship, which was damaged as it flew through the blockade. R2-D2, the astromech droid from the original movies, was on this ship, and everyone cheered loudly again when he appeared.

The group landed on a remote desert planet called Tatooine to repair their ship.  Tatooine was the planet where Luke lived with his aunt and uncle at the beginning of the original movie.  While searching for spaceship parts, the group met a servant boy named Anakin Skywalker, known to fans as the future Darth Vader.  Anakin showed them that he was building a protocol droid named “C-3PO.”   I found it amusing that the theater was completely silent at the first appearance of C-3PO; he was, like R2-D2, a character in the original trilogy, but presumably no one cheered for him because of his whiny mannerisms.

With no money for repairs, Qui-Gon and Anakin made a plan to gamble on racing, a hobby of Anakin’s.  Qui-Gon sensed that Anakin had strong Force abilities, and that he would win the race.  I laughed when I saw that the race announcer was a two-headed creature, both heads having the collective mannerisms of a typical sports announcing duo.  Anakin won, and with the ship repaired, he joined the rest of the group on the way to Coruscant, where Qui-Gon said that he would be trained as a Jedi.  Anakin was excited at first, but then felt conflicted when he realized that he would have to leave his mother.

“I don’t want things to change,” Anakin told his mother.

Anakin’s mother, who had encouraged him to take the opportunity before him, replied, “But you can’t stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting.” I noticed that she said suns, in the plural, because Tatooine had two suns in the original movie.

I was confused soon after when Anakin and the Queen’s handmaiden, Padmé, had a touching scene together on the ship. I was under the impression that the Queen, not Padmé, would be Anakin’s future love interest, but I decided to just wait and see how the rest of the movie played out. After arriving in the capital, the Queen and Palpatine discussed political proceedings and bureaucracy, while, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan brought Anakin to the Jedi Council. The Council included Yoda from the original movies, and Mace Windu, a new character played by recurring movie badass Samuel L. Jackson.  The crowd around me cheered again when these two appeared.

As the final act began, with the group back on Naboo to protect the Queen from the impending invasion, Padmé revealed herself to be the real Queen, with the other Queen just a decoy.  This answered my earlier questions about Padmé and Anakin.  During the battle, Anakin secretly flew a ship into orbit around Naboo and destroyed the enemy ship controlling the battle droids.  Darth Sidious’ apprentice, Darth Maul, fought Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon with a double-bladed lightsaber, wielding it like a long staff; the battle was accompanied by dramatic music, featuring a choir singing undecipherable syllables over the sort of orchestral music typical of the Star Wars movies.  Maul killed Qui-Gon in the battle, but Obi-Wan eventually defeated Maul.  At the end, Yoda said that the Sith always have a master and an apprentice, and Mace Windu asks, “Which was destroyed? The master or the apprentice?”  The camera then focused on Palpatine, lending credence to my assumption that he was in fact the Sith master. The title The Phantom Menace must be referring to Palpatine, working in the background to rise to power and take control of the galaxy.  (The other characters would learn of Palpatine’s true nature in Episode III, released in 2005.) The crowd cheered once again as the ending credits rolled.

“Well, that was interesting,” Jed said as we walked out of the theater.

“I feel like I have more questions than answers at this point,” I said.  “Hopefully they’ll be answered in Episodes II and III.”

“If Anakin built C-3PO, then how come C-3PO didn’t recognize Luke Skywalker’s last name?”

“Good question,” I admitted.  “Maybe his memory got erased at some point.”

“Another thing I’m wondering,” Jed continued.  “Where were Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru? The only family Anakin had in this movie was his mother.  So who was that who raised Luke?”

“Maybe they weren’t his real aunt and uncle,” I speculated.  “Maybe they just called themselves that so Luke wouldn’t look too deeply into his parentage and learn that Vader was his father.”  I had some questions too, but every question Jed asked made me wonder if maybe this movie was not as brilliant as I wanted it to be.

“So, you’re off to sleep in the car?” he asked.  “You know where you’re going to park for the night?”

“Yeah.  My master teacher from Nueces High said to park in front of her house, and come inside for breakfast.”

“Good. Glad you found a safe place. I’ll see you back home, then.”


Sleeping in the car was surprisingly uneventful.  It took a while to fall asleep, but I did get about three hours of sleep, and I was still sleeping when the alarm I set on my watch went off.  Judy welcomed me enthusiastically when I knocked on the door; she had a towel laid out for me in the bathroom so I could shower, and she made me a bagel and a glass of orange juice.

A few hours later, as I stood in the front of Judy’s classroom, ready to begin student teaching, some of the students had questions for me.  “How was the movie?” Andy Rawlings asked.  I had told the students yesterday that I was going to see The Phantom Menace at midnight. If only they remembered everything I told them about geometry as well as they remembered my plans with my friends.

“It was good,” I said.  “I enjoyed it.”

“Was Yoda in it?” Kayla Welch asked.  “He’s my favorite.”

“Yes, he was,” I replied.  As the classroom filled up, many more students started asking me about the movie, all simultaneously.  I knew what I had to do.  As soon as the bell rang, I said, “Does anyone have any questions,” and at that point. Becky Bautista raised her hand.  She had worked hard over the last few months to bring her D up to a B, and she had her math book open and her homework in front of her.  I would need to come back to Becky’s question later. I continued, “About Star Wars?” Becky’s hand went down, and every single other hand in the classroom went up.  I chuckled a little under my breath as I pointed to T.J.

“I saw a commercial where the bad guy had this sweet double-bladed lightsaber.  What was that battle like?” he asked.

“It was amazing.  It went on for several minutes.”

I pointed at Angelica next.  “Were those cute little bears in it?” she asked

“Ewoks, from Return of the Jedi?  They were not.”

I spent the next three minutes or so answering all of the students’ questions about the movie.  After that, I went over the previous homework assignment and made sure to answer Becky’s serious math question.


Both of Jed’s questions regarding continuity between this movie and the classic Star Wars trilogy were in fact answered in the later movies.  By Episode II, released in 2002 and set ten years later, Anakin’s mother had married an older man with a young adult son from a previous relationship, and this stepbrother of Anakin was the uncle who raised Luke.  And late in Episode III, someone mentioned getting C-3PO’s memory erased, explaining how C-3PO did not recognize the names Skywalker or Kenobi in the original movies.

Although the Star Wars prequels all did well at the box office, many fans held the opinion that they did not age as well as the classic trilogy, some even to the point of disowning the movies and insisting that there were only three Star Wars movies.  After the initial excitement wore off, I have not rewatched the prequels nearly as many times as I have seen the original trilogy, but my view of them was not as harsh.  The acting was not great, but I enjoyed the story, for the most part.  I always wondered how many of these disappointed Star Wars fans felt that way because they saw the classic trilogy as children, and their taste in cinema had become more sophisticated by the time they saw the prequels as adults.  Star Wars was not considered great cinema when it premiered in 1977; it only became the legendary movie it is now after it proved to be so popular.

Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 and released Episodes VII, VIII, and IX later that decade, along with two spinoff movies that filled in key parts of the backstory between Episodes III and IV.  The sequels also have not stood the test of time well, in my opinion; I have only watched them a few times each.  I enjoyed the two spinoffs, but many critics did not.  In recent years, Disney produced many Star Wars spinoff series, which I have not watched since I do not pay for their streaming service.  I considered myself a Star Wars fan through the sequel trilogy, but with all of these other series set in the Star Wars universe, I am not sure if I can claim that label anymore.  Good thing I never cared much for labels; I will enjoy the movies I like and not worry about the ones I do not.

My own life was about to change back in the spring of 1999, just like Anakin’s was when he left his mother to become a Jedi.  Anakin’s mother was right; I could not stop the change, any more than I could stop the sun from setting.  I would be finished with school in less than a month, and I would be employed as a teacher a few months later.  I would still have some of my friends in Jeromeville next year, and I still had my church, but nothing would ever be the same.  I did not like change, but it was inevitable, and this did not have to be a bad thing.

Readers: Do you like Star Wars? What did you think of the prequels? Did you see them in theaters? Tell me about it in the comments.

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[John Williams – Duel of the Fates]

May 15, 1999.  Brianna and Chelsea’s 20th birthday party. (#217)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 1 Comment

A week ago or so, when I was in the middle of job hunting, I sat at a table in the Memorial Union one afternoon, ostensibly reading for one of my classes, but actually people-watching and trying to get my mind off of all the stress of job hunting.  At the other end of the room, I spotted Brianna Johns and her unmistakable blonde curls walking toward me.  When it appeared that she was looking in my direction. I waved.

“Hey, Greg!” she said, approaching my table.  “I have to get to class, but I have something for you!”  I waited excitedly as she opened her backpack; what could this pretty girl have to give me?  She handed me a paper, a photocopied homemade flyer with printing in the middle and clip art of balloons and cake around it.  I read:

You’re invited!
BRIANNA & CHELSEA’S
20TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
Come join us for the celebration!
No gifts required

Saturday, May 15, 1999 2pm
Fleur-de-Lis Apartments Event Room
720 Alvarez Ave.
For more information, call Brianna or Chelsea
555-0147

I looked at the invitation again, and my mind was instantly full of questions.  Was May 15 Brianna’s actual birthday?  I felt like I should know this, but I did not. Did Brianna and Chelsea have the same birthday, or were they a few days apart and they just decided to combine their parties into one, since they had a lot of the same friends?  For that matter, was I even correct in assuming that the Chelsea on the invitation was Chelsea Robbins?  I knew that Brianna and Chelsea were roommates and ran in the same circles, but I did not know Chelsea’s birthday either, and maybe Brianna had another friend from somewhere else named Chelsea who also had a May birthday.  But the important thing was that I just got invited to a birthday party for a cute girl.  Two cute girls, if Chelsea was in fact Chelsea Robbins. I looked at the flyer again, particularly something I had not noticed at the bottom. The wording “call Brianna or Chelsea” suggested that the two of them lived together, since they had the same phone number, so apparently this was Chelsea Robbins. Maybe there were two roommates in the same apartment named Chelsea, but that was unlikely. “Awesome.  I’m pretty sure I can make it,” I said.

“Share the flyer with Jed.  He’s invited too.”

“I will do that!  Thank you!”


On the afternoon of the party, my roommate Jed and I walked into the event room next to the office of the Fleur-de-Lis apartment complex.  I had been here exactly once before, about three years earlier when I was looking for an apartment to rent with Brian Burr, Shawn Yang, and Josh McGraw.  I chose a different apartment instead of the one here, mostly because I misread the poor-quality photocopy of the floor plan of the other apartment and thought that the master bedroom, which Shawn and I shared, was larger than it actually was.  The master bedroom of the three-bedroom apartment at Fleur-de-Lis is actually significantly larger than most.  But I most likely would not be seeing the insides of any bedrooms today, since the party was in the event room.

Apparently Brianna was expecting a large crowd if she reserved this event room for the party.   But the large crowd had not shown up yet: so far, other than Brianna and Chelsea, the only other guests who had arrived were Tim Walton and Blake Lowry.

“Greg!  Jed!” Brianna exclaimed as we walked in.  “Thanks for coming!”

“Happy birthday!” I said. “Is today your actual birthday?”

“Yes! Mine is today, and Chelsea’s is the 17th. Monday.”

“Greg!” I heard Chelsea’s voice.  I looked to the other side of the room, where Chelsea, standing five feet, one inch tall, was struggling to hang a streamer high enough on the wall.  “You’re tall!  Can you help me?”

“Sure,” I said, chuckling because this was not the first time I, at six foot four, had been asked to do things like this.  I reached about a foot above where Chelsea was reaching, taped the streamer to the wall, and let go.

“Thanks!” she said.

“You’re welcome,” I replied.  “And happy birthday.”

“Thank you!”

I wandered back over to Brianna.  She was wearing a casual sundress and flip-flops, and her blue eyes seemed to match the light blue of the dress, as always seemed to be the case whenever she wore any shade of blue, green, or gray.  “You got roped into helping because you’re tall, I see,” she said.

“I’m used to it,” I replied.

“How’s the job hunting going?”

“I got a job!”

“You did?” she asked, her face bright.  “That’s so exciting!  Where?”

“Jorgensen High School, next to Tyler Air Force Base, between Nueces and Fairview.  The next school district over from where I’m student teaching now.”

“Congratulations!”

“What?” Blake asked, passing within earshot.

“I got a job,” I replied, humbly.

“That’s awesome!”

“So is that close enough to commute?” Brianna asked.  “Are you staying in Jeromeville?”

“Yes!  Still in the same house with Jed and Brody.  Sean is graduating, but he knows someone who will be taking his spot.”

“That’s great!  I’m happy for you!”

“Thanks,” I said.  Jed walked up at that point and started talking to Brianna, Tim, and Blake as I looked around the room.  A few more people had arrived by then.  Morgan King, Jill Finch, and Randy Smith were standing near the bowl of chips and salsa, and Marlene Fallon, 3 Silver, and Lacey Kilpatrick were just walking through the door.  I walked over and began talking to the new arrivals.

“Greg!” Marlene exclaimed.  “Good to see you!  How are you?”

“Pretty good,” I replied.  “I got a job!”

“You did? Congratulations!” Marlene gave me a hug, and 3 high-fived me.

“Where?” Lacey asked.

“Jorgensen High School.  By Tyler Air Force Base, between Fairview and Nueces.”

“Oh, ok!  Are you gonna move down there, or stay in Jeromeville and commute?”

“I’m staying in Jeromeville, at least for next year.  Probably move closer at some point in the future, but we’ll see.”

“That’s good!” Lacey exclaimed. “So I’ll still be seeing you around next year!”

“And you’ll still be coming to X-Files?” 3 asked.

“Of course!” I replied.

“Are you ready for Tuesday night?”

“Yes!  It’s gonna be crazy.  Everyone has waited for this for so long.  I just hope I can stay awake.”

“Dude.  I think you’ll be so full of adrenaline that you’ll stay awake just fine.”

“I hope so.  But if I’m tired enough, I can sleep through movies and TV shows.”


A little while later, I walked back over to where Jed was.  “3 was just talking about Tuesday night,” I explained.  “It’s gonna be really fun.”

“I know!  We’ll need to drive separately, right?”

“Yeah.  Because we’ll already be in Nueces, it’ll be over around three in the morning, and then I’ll have to be back at Nueces High for student teaching at 8.  I’m just going to find somewhere to sleep in the car, so I don’t have to drive all the way back.”

“That sounds crazy.  Are you sure?” he asked.

“It’s only for one day.  I’ll take a nap as soon as classes are over on Wednesday.  Maybe I’ll get a quick nap in during second period in the staff room, when I’m not teaching.”

“That works,” he replied, laughing.

“Greg!” Brianna called out, approaching me with a guy I did not know and a birthday card.  “I need you to settle a debate, with all of your mathematical wisdom.  Joe, he was my next-door neighbor in the dorm last year, he just gave me a birthday card, and he wrote, ‘I hope you have a great 20th year!’  But I think that if I’m turning twenty, I’ve already lived twenty years, so this will be my twenty-first year.  Who is right?”

I thought for a minute, and said, “You are.  Turning twenty means you have completed twenty years, so this upcoming year will be your twenty-first year.”

Joe protested, “But then why can’t she buy beer?”

“Because that’s not how the law works.  Being twenty-one years old means that you have lived for a full twenty-one years.”

“That’s dumb,” Joe said, looking confused.

After he walked off, Brianna turned to me and said, “I knew I was right.  Thanks.”

“There’s no place in the world for bad math,” I explained.

“That’s why you’re gonna be a great teacher.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know yet what classes you’ll be teaching?”

“I was told Basic Math A, Algebra I, and geometry, although that could still change.”

“What’s Basic Math A?”

“That’s the class for freshmen who aren’t ready for algebra,” I explained.  “Like pre-algebra.  From there, they can either go to Algebra I as sophomores, or if they just want to graduate from high school and not apply to a four-year college, they take Basic Math B and then they’re done with math.”

“I see.  I was in all honors and college prep classes, and so were most of my friends, so I don’t really know how it works for students who aren’t on that path.”

“Same,” I said.  “I took Algebra I in eighth grade.”

“Me too.”

“That’s one thing I’ve learned from student teaching.  The world I lived in, the world of honors classes and doing your work and going straight to a four-year school, that’s not the world most students live in.  So I need to adjust the way I think about things sometimes.”

“That’s so true,” Brianna replied.  “You don’t really think about that much when you’re somewhere like Jeromeville.”


I sat on a couch by myself as I watched the party fill up.  I needed to take a break and sit by myself for a minute.  I knew the majority of people here, from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship or from church, or both, but some of Brianna and Chelsea’s friends from classes and their freshman dorms were here too.  Music was playing in the background, loud enough to make the whole party feel loud, but not blaring to the point that I had to shout in order for someone right next to me to hear me.

I noticed Tim and Chelsea sitting and talking across the room from me.  The last few times I had hung out around this crowd, the two of them had been looking awfully chummy.  I could not tell if they were an actual couple or just close friends; I was always the last one to hear whenever a new couple got together, or broke up.  I hated being the last one to know.  I feared putting myself in the awkward situation of trying to get close to a girl who already had a boyfriend.  And, many times, the way I found out about a breakup was by seeing the girl with someone else.  That always made me feel like I missed my chance with that girl.

A while later, after I had caught up with a few more people, the music stopped, and I heard Brianna shout, “Time for cake!”  Tim and 3 walked into the room carrying a sheet cake from a grocery store that said “Happy 20th Brianna & Chelsea” written in frosting, with twenty lit candles on top.  Everyone began singing “Happy Birthday,” then Brianna and Chelsea blew out the candles together, all twenty of them.  The crowd applauded.  When I got to the table with the cake, I cut a piece a bit larger than I probably should have and stood to the side, slowly eating it.

I heard someone put on a song that I recognized from when I used to go swing dancing.  A few of the party attendees who knew how to swing dance got up and started dancing, and I saw Jed lead the girl he was talking to out to the dancing area, teaching her some basic moves.  I did not know Jed’s dance partner; she appeared to be one of Chelsea’s friends who did not go to JCF or our church.

Brianna was standing near me as I ate my massive slice of cake.  “Don’t you know how to swing dance?” she asked.

“Kind of,” I said.  “I used to go regularly last summer, but then when X-Files started up again in November, the watch parties at the De Anza house were the same night as dancing, and I had just recently had a bad experience swing dancing.  I’ve only been once since then.”

“What kind of bad experience?”

“Nothing really.  Just people not being very nice.  What about you?  Do you dance?”

“I went a few times spring of freshman year, but it’s been a while.  I’m kind of rusty.”

“I’m rusty too, but would you like to dance?” I asked, extending my hand toward her.

“Sure!” Brianna took my hand as we walked toward the dancers, and I started leading her in the basic step.  I turned her to the outside a few beats later.  “It’s kind of hard to do that turn in flip-flops,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.  Brianna kicked her shoes off toward the area where we had just been standing, and continued to dance with me, barefoot.  We danced for the rest of that song, with me leading her in various turns to both sides, and dipping her on the song’s final beat.  I looked down at her, smiling, and she smiled back.

“You don’t seem that rusty to me,” she said as we walked back to the edge of the dance area.

“I guess it’s coming back to me,” I explained.  “This week is the last X-Files of the year.  I might start going swing dancing regularly again after that.  I know now that I’ll be in Jeromeville next year, so I won’t be spending the whole summer looking for jobs.  And Jed will be in town this summer, so I’ll at least have someone I know there.”

Brianna looked at Jed, who was now dancing a second song with Chelsea’s friend.  “He’s pretty good,” she remarked.

“He really is.  He got really into it last summer when he went home and found a place to go dancing down there, and he’s been a regular at swing night at the U-Bar ever since.”

“That’s cool.  I think you should keep it up.”

“Would you like to dance again?” I asked as another swing song started.  I noticed that Tim and Chelsea were now on the dance floor, as were Marlene and 3.

“Sure!” Brianna replied. We danced again, with me leading her in mostly the same moves I had for the song before.  I noticed over her shoulder that Tim and Chelsea definitely looked like a couple on the dance floor.  Marlene and 3, on the other hand, had insisted for the last two school years that they were just good friends, and I was inclined to believe them.  Everyone on the dance floor looked like they were having a lot of fun.  This was a great party.

After that song ended, Brianna and I walked away from the dance floor.  “My friend from last year who I haven’t seen in forever just got here,” she said.  “I need to go say hi to her.  But I’ll talk to you more later, okay?”

“Sure,” I said.  I wandered over to Tim and Chelsea, who had also just walked off the dance floor.  “How’s it going?” I asked them.

“Good,” Tim replied.  Chelsea nodded as Tim asked, “Are you ready for Tuesday night?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Don’t you teach in Nueces the next morning?  Is there somewhere you can stay, so you won’t have to drive all the way back to Jeromeville in the middle of the night, then drive all the way to Nueces again a few hours later?”

“I’m thinking I’m just going to sleep in the car in the parking lot.  Or maybe find a quiet street somewhere, where no one will notice that I’m sleeping in the car.”

“That’s a good idea.  But be safe.”

“I will.  It’s only for one day.  And it’ll be worth it.”

“Totally.”


Jed and I got home around dinner time.  I stayed home the rest of the night, doing some reading for one of my classes, and working on a new episode of Dog Crap and Vince.  I had been trying to post my creative illustrated stories more often, and I had a lot of ideas.  In the previous episode, I had introduced a new character, a pretty blonde blue-eyed girl who went to school with Dog Crap and Vince.  Using MS Paint to make the graphics for the episode, I put this new girl in this one also, but I made her shirt a little more brighter blue than it had been before, and I made her eye color match her shirt exactly.  Just like how Brianna’s eyes always seemed to match her shirt, whenever she wore any shade of blue, green, or gray.

As I would learn over the next few weeks, Tim and Chelsea were most definitely a couple.  Unfortunate, because that was one more cute girl off the market, but Chelsea and I probably would not have worked out anyway with the fifteen-inch height difference.  Tim and Chelsea got married a few years later, they still were married when I last saw them in person in 2017, and to my knowledge, they still are today.

I had plans to look forward to next Tuesday night.  Very large plans with a very large group of around sixty people.  That will be a story for next time.  Maybe I could somehow work things out so that Brianna would be sitting next to me.  If there were sixty people coming to this, I had a one in fifty-nine shot of sitting next to her.  Two in fifty-nine, if I was not sitting on an aisle.  That was better than three percent; unlikely, but not out of the question.

And Brianna had agreed with me that this was her twenty-first year, not her twentieth.  It was always nice to see a pretty girl appreciate being mathematically correct.  I am writing this in the year that many of my classmates are celebrating the milestone fiftieth birthday, and I still to this day remind them that they are not looking forward to their fiftieth year, as some have said in their social media posts.  Proper mathematics is still important.

Readers: Tell me in the comments about a memorable birthday party you attended.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

[Goo Goo Dolls – Iris]

Late April – Early May, 1999. Finally, I had a plan for next year. (#216)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 5 Comments

I walked into the staff room during second period, my break between my student teaching periods.  Three other teachers, Jim, Sally, and Phil, were in the break room; Jim and Sally were grading papers, and Phil was sitting in an armchair, apparently doing nothing.

“Hi, Greg,” Jim said.  “How are you today?”

I had been thinking about how to announce the exciting news to anyone who asked about my day today, and I decided to just blurt it out.  I had told Kate before I started teaching in her classroom, and she seemed mildly enthusiastic, which was about what I expected from someone who had a rather unemotional personality.  “I got a job offer,” I said.

“Congratulations!” Sally exclaimed.

“Where?” Jim asked.

“Petersburg High,” I replied.

“I’d turn it down.  You can do better than that,” Phil said from this chair.  I chuckled awkwardly, not expecting such a blunt response.

“Are you gonna take it?” Jim asked.

“I’m not sure.  They want to hear back from me by tomorrow.  I’d kind of like to stay in Jeromeville and commute if I can, and Petersburg is too far.  I still have friends in Jeromeville.  I don’t know how long I should hold out to see if I get a job closer to home.  Also, Petersburg seemed, well, a little rough.”

“It is rough,” Phil interjected.

“But I don’t know if I should hold out too long.  I don’t want to be stuck without a job.”

“Everyone who has seen you teach says you’re a good teacher,” Jim said reassuringly.  “You’ll get another offer.  Maybe by July or August if you don’t have a job, then take the first thing that comes along, but it’s too early for that.  You’ll get something better.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You have any more interviews coming up?” Jim asked.

“Yes, actually.  Jorgensen tomorrow afternoon.  That would be close enough to commute from Jeromeville.  And on Friday, Northgate High School in El Monte.”

“Jorgensen is a good school,” Phil said.  “That’s one worth holding out for, especially if you already have an interview there.  They’re in their own school district, you know, separate from Nueces and Fairview, and when there’s only one high school in the district, you’re not competing for attention from the district office.  And they get money from the Air Force for the kids who live on base.”

“Military kids also usually have parents who are more involved with their education,” Sally added.

“That’s true,” I said.  Regardless of what happened in the next few days, I would have some big decisions to make very soon.


In the late nineteenth century, a community of Norwegian farmers immigrated to this region, settling and farming the land between Nueces and Fairview.  During World War II, Tyler Air Force base was built on their land, but a few remnants of this previous community remain.  The road leading south from Nueces to Tyler Air Force Base is called Jorgensen Road, after one of these families, and the school that was about to interview me took its name from this road, even though the school’s address itself was on a short side street  I had only been this way once before, a month ago or so, when I was driving around looking up close at schools where I had sent job applications.  The school was on the right side of the street, undeveloped farmland with cattle grazing in a pasture on the left, and a residential part of the base straight ahead past the school behind a fence.

I drove past the school looking for a parking place.  The sign near the entrance said JORGENSEN HIGH SCHOOL – HOME OF THE VIKINGS, apparently another nod to the region’s Scandinavian heritage.  But something clearly appeared off.  Large groups of students were standing around outside, beyond the gate at the entrance to the school, along the street.  It was too early for these students to be dismissed to go home, and if it was an early release day for some reason, these students would be heading to cars and buses, not just standing around.  I was confused.  I also saw police cars parked in the staff parking lot; hopefully everyone was okay.

I parked, got out of the car, and headed toward the office, trying to figure out what was going on.  A woman approached me and asked, “May I help you?”

“I’m coming for a job interview.”

“What was your name?”

“Greg Dennison.”

“I’ll let Mr. Harbison and Mrs. McCall know you’re here,” she said.  Then, apologetically, she gestured at all the chaos around us and explained, “Sorry for all this.  We had a bomb threat.  We had to evacuate the school.  This has never happened in the fourteen years that I’ve been here.”

“Oh, wow” I replied, not sure how to respond to that.  It made sense, though.  Last week, there was a major attack on a school in another state that was all over the news, so it made sense that there would be copycat incidents.  And if I was planning on spending my career working in schools, I could expect chaos like this to happen every once in a while.

A few minutes later, an older gray-haired man whom I remembered from the job fair a few weeks ago approached me; this was Bob Harbison, the principal.  “Good to see you again, Greg,” Mr. Harbison said, shaking my hand.  “I apologize for the delay.  We had a bomb threat, and the police are still investigating, but they said they should be finishing soon.”

“Wow,” I replied.

“I need to go check on things.  If the police say we’re clear, we’ll send students to class and then get the interview started shortly.”

“Sounds good,” I said.  I looked toward the gate at the main entrance of the school.  I stood with my back to a bus drop-off lane; an iron fence with a gate separated me from a courtyard with picnic tables painted green.  The school office was to my left, the gym to the right, and another building that was probably the cafeteria was at the opposite end of the courtyard.  Farther back on the left and the right were small buildings that appeared to house classrooms.

About fifteen minutes after I arrived, I heard someone on the public address system announce, “Attention all students!  The campus is clear and safe.  Please go get your things, then immediately go to your fifth period class.”  I breathed deeply; apparently this bomb threat was not real.  Someone from the office who knew that I was there told me I could come inside and sit, and after sitting in the office for about another ten minutes, Mr. Harbison led me to his office.  Two others, a woman in her thirties and a man with thinning hair, sat in the office.  They introduced themselves as Vice Principal Shannon McCall and Jerry DeBoer, mathematics department chair.

The interview began with many of the same questions I have been asked at other interviews.  Tell me about your mathematics background.  What is your plan for classroom management?  How do you determine what grade a student receives in your class?  How do you make sure all students meet the standards, including those with special needs and those from disadvantaged backgrounds?  I had been asked these questions several times over the last month by now, and I felt like I was prepared to answer them.

I did get one question that I did not remember having been asked before.  Mr. DeBoer asked, “The state has approved new funding for class size reduction in ninth grade, to make sure students are better prepared for success in high school.  Both of our current openings will include reduced-size freshman classes.  How will you teach differently in a class of twenty students, compared to a standard-sized class of up to thirty-three?”

I thought about this.  Class size reduction was a big fad in education at the time, and the state was implementing a plan to provide extra money for this, but it was not distributed evenly among ages.  The smaller classes would only be in kindergarten through third grade, plus the first year of high school, because these years had been identified as times where many students fall behind and never recover.  “With a smaller class, students get more one-on-one time with the teacher,” I explained.  “So I would use that time to watch more closely which students need redirection or additional instruction.  For example, I’d have more time to walk around while students are working, and pay attention to what each of them is doing individually.  Students also just feel less lost in the shuffle when classes are smaller.”

“That’s true,” Mr. DeBoer said, nodding.  The three of them continued asking me questions, taking notes on my responses.  After about ten questions, Mr. DeBoer offered to show me around the campus, and I said sure.

The classrooms were clustered in small buildings of six to ten rooms each, with courtyards and picnic tables in between, including two such clusters of portable classrooms.  Mr. DeBoer showed me his classroom, in building C.  “The math classes are all in building C,” he explained, “but we might also have two small rooms in building E for the small freshman classes.  They’re still figuring that out.  You probably won’t have your own room, though.  You’ll have some classes in one room and some in another.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s the same way at Nueces High right now.”

“We’re losing a math teacher this year, and we’ll be adding another math position because of increased enrollment.  Our district office tends to post openings later than other nearby districts, so we didn’t have a lot of applications.  We had just posted those jobs when the University of Jeromeville had their job fair, so the timing worked out perfectly.”

“I see.”

“I went to Jeromeville myself, class of 1969.  It’s grown a lot since then.  There were only about five thousand students back then.  That was a crazy time to be on a college campus.”

“I’m sure it was,” I said.

“Did you have any more questions for me?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.  “Thanks for showing me around.”

“You’re welcome.  We have a few more interviews scheduled this week, and we’ll make a decision sometime next week.  We’ll be in touch.”

“Sounds good!  Thank you!


Two days later, I again found myself leaving straight from student teaching to another interview.  This one was a bit more of a drive, about an hour and a half through a part of the state that was mostly farmland.  Instead of taking Highway 100, which ran northeast back to Jeromeville, I took a back road directly east until it hit Highway 117, then turned right, south, to where 117 ended in a T-intersection with Highway 212.  This was a long road, starting far to the west past Valle Luna and extending east across the Valley into the mountains, but most of this road was rural highway with one lane in each direction, as my entire drive had been so far.  I drove east for about half an hour from that point until I reached Highway 9, the main highway through the Valley, then south for a while until I got to El Monte, a city slightly larger than Jeromeville in population.  I had consulted a map before I left, and the directions I had written for myself got me to the school with no problems.  

Northgate High School, like Jorgensen, appeared to have been built a few decades ago.  The architecture was similar, with small buildings clustered around a courtyard.  The school mascot was the Knights, and the colors were red, white, and blue.  I walked to the office and explained who I was and why I was there; the secretary directed me to sit, and I would be called when I was ready.

“Greg?” I heard an adult voice say after about ten minutes.  A woman stepped toward me and said, “I’m Christine Reese, the principal.  It’s nice to meet you.”  Ms. Reese directed me to follow her into her office, where a vice principal and two math teachers waited around a table and introduced themselves to me.

“Shall we get started?” Ms. Reese asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

The questions were, again, similar to many of the questions I had been asked in interviews before.  I gave my standard answers to questions about classroom management and grading.  I was asked at one point to give details of my discipline policy, and I said that I would start with a warning, to make sure the student knew what the problem was.  If the misbehavior continued, I would give after-school detention, and if that did not change, I would refer the student to the administration.  “And definitely no later than the point of assigning after school detention, I would contact home and explain the situation,” I added.

“Good,” Mr. Quincy, the vice principal said as the four interviewers took notes.  “Now suppose you have a student who turns in all the homework, makes an effort to participate in class, but fails tests.  What grade would you give that student?”

I paused.  This seemed like an unfair question.  Grading should not be subjective; a student’s grade was determined by a well-defined mathematical formula.  Rewarding effort may have been trendy in educational circles, but doing so would not make the grade reflect what the student actually learned or accomplished.  I gave an honest answer.  “Most math classes have a policy that at least half the grade is based on tests, with a greater percentage for more advanced classes.  So if a student gets near full credit on homework but does poorly on tests, usually that averages out to a D.”  I paused, then added, “But if the student is really making effort on the homework, it is unlikely that the student would do that poorly on a test, since the student has been practicing the material.  And if this did happen, I’d try to find out why.”

“Good,” Mrs. Santana, one of the teachers, said.  The interview continued, much like most of my other interviews had.  Afterward, I thanked everyone asked if I could look around the campus, and Mrs. Santana showed me around.  I drove home to Jeromeville after that, and by the time I arrived, it was dinner time and I was hungry.


The following Thursday, six days after my interview at Northgate, I was in the seminar class with the other student teachers.  This time of year, my classmates were beginning to get job offers, and we often started class with announcements of any job offers that we had accepted.  “Melissa has accepted a job offer at Thomas Jefferson High School in Stockdale,” Dr. Van Zandt announced as everyone applauded.  “And Ricardo has accepted a job offer at Jorgensen High School, in Fairview next to Tyler Air Force Base.”

I clapped, but much less enthusiastically.  I knew that Ricardo had interviewed at Jorgensen also. He grew up nearby in Nueces, still lived at home, and wanted to stay near home.  But this felt like a bad sign for me.  If Ricardo had already heard back from Jorgensen, and I had not, clearly they wanted him more than they wanted me.  However, it was not yet time to give up.  Mr. Harbison had said that there were two positions open, and maybe they had not yet made a decision on the second position.

My decision was further complicated when I got home and saw the blinking light on the answering machine.  I pressed Play and heard, “Hi, Greg.  This is Christine Reese at Northgate High School, El Monte School District.  We would like to offer you the position for teaching mathematics.  Please call us back at your earliest convenience.”  I wrote down the phone number that Ms. Reese gave, although I was pretty sure I already had it written somewhere.

Applying for jobs was not like applying to universities, where the process included time to weigh multiple offers.  I would not have weeks or months to wait and see if other offers came in.  The administration at Northgate needed to know quickly whether or not I would take the position.  It was not easy for me when I called Petersburg a week ago and turned down their offer, even though I had decided I did not want that job.  I had no such reservation about working at Northgate, but I did not want to leave a possible offer from Jorgensen on the table,  mostly because it was close enough to commute from Jeromeville.  If I stayed in Jeromeville, I would not have to leave Jed and Brody hanging, trying to find a fourth housemate at the last minute.  I could stay involved at Jeromeville Covenant Church, volunteering with the youth group as I had the last two years.  I had friends in Jeromeville who were sophomores and juniors this year, so I would not have to build a community from scratch as a newcomer, as I would if I were to move to El Monte.

When I called Mrs. Reese back, instead of giving a definitive answer, I asked, “Can I have a couple days to think about it?  I had one other interview last week that I’m still waiting to hear from.”

Mrs. Reese paused for a minute, then said, “Can you have an answer for me by the end of the day Monday?  Does that work?”

“Sure,” I said, wishing for more time but not wanting to ask something unreasonable.  If I had not heard from Jorgensen by Monday afternoon, I would take the job at Northgate, so now I  had a job for next year either way.

“May I ask who I’m competing with?” Mrs. Reese asked.

I was not expecting her to say this, and I was not sure if it was a good strategy to let on too much of what I was thinking, but I decided, as I had multiple times with unexpected questions from prospective employers, that honesty would be the best policy.  “Jorgensen High, by Tyler Air Force Base,” I said.  “That’s close enough to commute from Jeromeville, and I’m still deciding whether or not I want to stay in Jeromeville another year.”

“That’s a good reason,” she replied.  “I look forward to hearing from you on Monday, then.  Take care.”

“You too.  Thank you for everything,” I said.


The following Monday was a hot day.  It was now the second week of May, and summer weather had arrived.  I drove back from student teaching in Nueces with the air conditioner on full blast, both because of the blazing sun outside, but also because I was nervous.  I would have to make a decision today.  Either I would have a message on my machine from Jorgensen at some point today, or I would be calling Ms. Reese at Northgate, accepting that job, and making plans to move to El Monte next year.  All were overwhelming and scary prospects, but at this point it was in God’s hands.  I walked in the door, saw the blinking light on the answering machine, and pressed Play with trembling hands.

“Hi, Greg.  This is Bob Harbison from Jorgensen High School.  We would like to offer you a job for next year.  You’ll be teaching freshman algebra, Basic Math A, and geometry.  If you are still interested, please call back and let me know as soon as possible.”

I dropped my backpack and exhaled deeply.  Finally.  I had a plan for next year.  I was going to stay in Jeromeville.  I was going to live here at 902 Acacia Drive with Jed, Brody, and a friend of Sean’s whom I had met a couple times who would be taking his place in the house after he graduated.  I would continue to attend J-Cov with many of my existing church friends.

I nervously called Mr. Harbison and accepted the job.  Then I nervously called Ms. Reese at Northgate, who was in a meeting and unavailable, and left a message that I had accepted another job, thanking her for her time and consideration.  I rode my bike to campus, treated myself to a burrito at the Coffee House to celebrate, and told Dr. Van Zandt at the start of class that I had a job.  Everyone clapped for me when he announced it, and Ricardo looked over at me, smiling.  Ricardo and I would be coworkers next year.  A familiar face on campus.

Jorgensen High was not my final career move, and I did not end up spending the rest of my life in Jeromeville.  When and why I left that job and moved away are stories for another time.  At the time, I was hoping to stay in Jeromeville indefinitely, but in hindsight, it was not realistic to have everything figured out for the rest of my life now, at age twenty-two.  Some people do figure things out early; Noah Snyder from church, for example, still lives in Jeromeville to this day, where he raised two boys who attended Jeromeville public schools and youth group at the church.  That did not happen to me, but that was okay.

I rode my bike home from class slowly that afternoon, admiring the view of all the large trees on campus and the familiar trees and houses along Andrews Road a little more than usual.  I had done it.  I had a job in the area.  I still had some time left in this quirky but charming university town, where I hated the politics but loved the surroundings and the community I had at church.  For now, at least, for the indefinite future, Jeromeville was going to be my home.

Readers: What was your first actual adult job? If you haven’t had one yet, what was your first job, or what do you want your first adult job to be? Tell me about it in the comments.

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[Hootie & the Blowfish – I Will Wait]

April 20-23, 1999.  A week of sad news. (#215)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 4 Comments

Disclaimer: This week’s episode involves major tragedies in which people lost their lives. If this is your first time here, you might want to start with Episode 1 instead. I am not writing this to capitalize on the deaths of others, nor do I want to reopen any emotional wounds. But I strive to make DLTDGB as historically accurate as possible. One of the events described here was very widely reported in the national media. The other involves someone who was not a national celebrity, but this event was widely reported in the media in the region where it actually occurred, and the individual in question has been mentioned by name in previous episodes of DLTDGB. My sympathies to anyone reading this who may have been affected by these events.

Today was starting out like a typical Tuesday.  I woke up in the morning, drove straight down Highway 100 westbound to my student teaching assignment in Nueces, dealt with a lot of kids not paying attention in Basic Math B, hung out in the teachers’ lounge during my period off, taught geometry, and assisted in Honors Algebra II.  Around noon, when the students went to lunch, I drove back to Jeromeville, flipping around on the radio, changing the station when a song I did not like came on.  Usually, if the DJ started talking between songs, I would also change the station, or put on a CD for a song or two before checking the radio again.  Somewhere between Silvey and Jeromeville, my brain had settled into a lull, watching nut orchards and cattle ranches pass by along the mostly straight six-lane freeway, so I was slow to change the station when I heard a song end and the DJ begin speaking in a more serious voice than usual.  As my brain processed the words I heard, I realized that maybe this would not be a typical Tuesday after all.

“Breaking news today out of Colorado,” the DJ began.  “Two active gunmen shooting on campus at Columbine High School in Littleton.  The number of dead and wounded is still unknown.  This is a developing story; we will have more updates later.”  The broadcast then went to a commercial.

I let the commercial play, tuning out anything that was actually said.  This was certainly not the kind of news that one would hear every day.  And I did not want to seem insensitive, but tragedy happens all the time, and this one happened a thousand miles away, so there was not much I could do except go on with my day.

My university classes that afternoon, like all of my classes that year, were full of other student teachers, so of course I overheard my classmates talking about the events unfolding that day in Colorado.  It happened at a school, and school was our world now.  Some had not heard the news yet, and some had heard wild speculation about the number of fatalities.  One news outlet had estimated twenty-five dead and many more wounded, the deadliest shooting to ever occur at an American school.  Although I read the Capital City Record newspaper and the Daily Colt campus paper every morning, I was not one to follow the news constantly around the clock.  That was not really a thing in 1999, before everyone had the Internet in their pockets, and when the news media was just beginning to embrace the Internet as a delivery method for their news.  So I did not really hear any more details about Columbine High School that night.

I did get some good news for me personally on that day, though.  When I got home from class in the late afternoon, the answering machine light was blinking, indicating that I had a message.  I pressed Play and listened to the message:

“Hi.  This is Joe Valdez, principal of Petersburg High School.  We’re interested in interviewing you for the open math position next year.  We can do that Friday at two o’clock.  Give me a call back and confirm that that works for you.”  Mr. Valdez gave the school phone number, and then hung up.

My first job interview.  This was a big deal.  Maybe this would be a good week after all, despite the sad news in Colorado.  I went to bed that night, still unaware of many details of that breaking story, and unaware that something equally tragic and much closer to home would happen that night while I was sleeping.


Of course, the events at Columbine High School were all over the newspaper the next morning.  As I ate my morning bowl of Cheerios and read the paper, I learned more details of what had happened.  Much was still unknown, including the motive of the attack, but the two gunmen were students at the school, and they shot themselves at the end of the attack.  The death toll had also been revised downward; the report was now that twelve students and one teacher had been killed in the attack, still enough to make it the deadliest attack at a school in the history of the USA at the time.

The shooting was on everyone’s mind the next day at school.  After Basic Math B class, I went to the teachers’ lounge, where Sally Stein, Jim Emerson, and Phil Johnson, three other teachers who were on their prep periods, sat around the table talking.  Jim was grading papers while the others spoke.  I got out papers to grade as well.

“These kids have so much negativity in their lives,” Sally said.  “Violent video games, dark music, and all that stuff.”

“And, of course, it’s so easy to get a gun in America,” Phil added.  Go figure, I thought, someone has to make every terrible tragedy into a political statement.  I kept silent, though.

“It’s more important than ever that teachers make an effort to reach out to those students who feel like outcasts,” Jim pointed out.  “Those two shooters were on the fringes of society, angry at all the people who rejected them.”

“It’s kind of scary working at a school right now,” Phil said.  “Especially this one.  We don’t have a PA system, we don’t have phones or intercoms or anything in the classroom.  If something like this happened here, we wouldn’t have any way to warn everyone.”

“I know!” Sally replied.

“I think this might actually get the Board to approve putting phones in the classroom here.  It’s a safety issue now.  I’m going to sign up to speak at the next board meeting.”

“That’s a good idea.”

I paused from my grading and stared off into space, as I do sometimes when deep in thought.  Although the Columbine High shooting had been on my mind a lot ever since I heard about it yesterday, this was the first moment I had ever connected it to my own day-to-day life.  Apparently there were teachers, and probably students, who were afraid to come to school now.  When I was getting ready this morning, it never once crossed my mind that being shot at Nueces High was something I had to worry about.  Theoretically, I could be shot anywhere, while doing anything, and if it was my time to go, there was nothing I could do about it, so I did not live every day in fear of something like this.

That night, The Edge, the youth group at Jeromeville Covenant Church, had their weekly meeting.  Before the kids got there, the staff and volunteers would meet to go over the night.  Adam, the youth pastor, opened by saying, “Wow.  It’s been quite the week, and it’s only Wednesday.”

“Yeah,” added Faith, the paid youth intern.  “I just can’t imagine what all those people are going through right now.”

“I’ve been to Littleton,” Adam said.  “That summer camp in the Rockies where I worked for a few years. Littleton was where I’d go into town to do my shopping, and I went to a midweek small group at a church in Littleton.  It reminds me a lot of Jeromeville.  An upper-middle-class area, a lot of parents who work long hours, and that can make kids feel neglected.  Jeromeville is the same way, with so many parents being busy academic types.  Some of these kids feel neglected, alone, and rejected, and they could easily turn to violence to deal with that.”

“Yeah,” Faith added.  “I’ve never been to Littleton, but I could see that.”

I would learn years later that Columbine High School was actually outside of the Littleton city limits, in an unincorporated suburban neighborhood that was also called Columbine on some maps.  But the Post Office used Littleton as the city name for the school’s address, so all the news reports said that the school was in Littleton.  I had never been to Littleton, or Columbine, or Colorado at all, so I did not know if this technicality would change Adam’s opinion of the area.  I had, however, lived in Jeromeville for almost five years now, and what he said about Jeromeville being the kind of place where something like this could happen certainly seemed plausible.  Hopefully J-Cov, as a church with a strong youth program, could be a place where some of these troubled students could find hope and connection.


I woke up Thursday morning and read the Capital City Record while eating a bowl of Cheerios, as I usually did.  I made a note to go to the store, since the box of Cheerios was almost empty.  Maybe I would get Rice Krispies instead this time.  The front page of the newspaper had more unfolding details about the shooting in Colorado, some of which came from official reports, and some of which was pure speculation, mostly about the gunmen’s motives and connections to the victims.  On page two of the paper, a headline unrelated to the shooting jumped out at me that made me do a double take, to make sure that what I thought I just read was correct: “Paul Sykes, 31, local musician and poet, found dead at home.”

What?  No.  How? I thought.

I continued reading, and looked at the picture with the article.  This was definitely the man I had seen perform four times, and met once.  Paul Sykes grew up in Jeromeville in a family that was very active in the local performing arts community.  He and his siblings spent several years performing in a band called Lawsuit, touring up and down the West Coast, and more recently he had been performing spoken-word shows of his own poetry around the region.  He was found late Tuesday night, his death having been ruled a suicide.

I heard about Lawsuit from an older student four years ago, when I was a freshman.  They always performed at the Spring Picnic.  I saw them at my first two Spring Picnics, then twice more at other shows, before they broke up during my third year.  I loved their music; it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before.

In addition to the news being absolutely heartbreaking, I found the timing of this to be a little chilling.  Shortly after I first saw Lawsuit freshman year, I noticed that Tina Nowell down the hall had their CD, so I made a tape of it.  I bought Lawsuit’s next, and final, album on CD the following year.  Around the time they broke up, I started volunteering with the youth group at church, and I got really into the Christian rock that was popular at that time.  I listened mostly to Christian music for about two years.  Just a few months ago, I had bought a new computer that had the capability to record audio CDs, and I had started making mix CDs of some of the songs I liked from albums that I did not listen to all the way through anymore.  One of my mix CDs had a Lawsuit song on it.  My friend Brennan Channing, a freshman this year, knew of Lawsuit from his older brother who also went to Jeromeville.  Brennan had on CD the same Lawsuit album that I had the copied tape of, so I copied Brennan’s CD and had just recently begun listening to that album again, in CD-quality sound this time.  The Spring Picnic was just a week ago, and I always remembered Lawsuit around that time of year, since their show was the highlight of my first Spring Picnic in 1995.  Suddenly, this music was back in my life in a big way, and just as suddenly, the vocalist was gone.

I sat for a few minutes in silence after I finished my Cheerios.  I eventually got up and drove to Nueces for student teaching, listening to Lawsuit on the way.  I tried to act normal at student teaching, and for the most part I did, but the weight of the thoughts in my head got to me a few times.  Toward the end of geometry class, I instructed the students to work in groups, and instead of walking around and helping them, asking leading questions to informally assess their understanding, I stood in the corner of the room and stared off into space.

“Mr. Dennison?” Kayla Welch said.  I continued staring.  “Mr. Dennison?  Did I do this right?”

Snapping back to reality, I looked at Kayla.  “Sorry,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  Just a lot on my mind today.”

“I hope things get better.”

“Thank you,” I replied, smiling.  “What was your math question?”

Kayla showed me the problem, where she had to find the volume of a figure made from a cylinder and two cones attached at the end.  I looked at her work and told her that it looked correct to me.


As if the timing of Paul Sykes’ passing was not unsettling enough, when I got back to campus and looked for a place to sit on the Quad and eat lunch, the first person I saw was Brennan.  He was sitting and talking with some of his friends, some of whom were also eating lunch; I recognized one of his friends from Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  “Hey, Greg,” Brennan said, watching me approach.  “Wanna sit with us?”

“Sure,” I said, taking the sandwich I packed out of my backpack.  I tried to think about what to do next.  Do I say something?  Would Brennan have heard the news?  Do I just stay quiet?  After a few seconds, I blurted out, “Did you hear what happened to Paul Sykes?”

“Who?” Brennan asked.

“Paul Sykes.  The singer from Lawsuit.”

“Oh!  No, I didn’t.  What happened?”

“He died.  It was in the paper this morning.”

“No way,” Brennan replied, trailing off, then asking, “The Daily Colt?”

“I haven’t read the Colt yet today.  I saw it in the Cap City Record this morning.”

“That’s sad.  How’d it happen?  He wasn’t that old, was he?”

“Thirty-one,” I said.  “They ruled it a suicide.”

“Wow.  That’s really sad.”  Brennan sat quietly for a few seconds, then mused, “I wonder if this was a hard time of year for Paul.  Because Lawsuit always used to play the Spring Picnic, and now they aren’t together anymore.”

“Could be.”

“Was he still doing music at all?”

“I heard a while back he was doing spoken-word poetry shows, as a solo artist, or something like that,” I said.  “I’m sorry to be the one to bring bad news, especially with everything else that’s been happening this week.”

“Yeah.  What’s it like being at a school this week, after the shooting in Colorado?”

“A lot of teachers are talking about it.  Specifically that Nueces High is an older building with no PA system, and no phones or intercoms in the classroom, so there would be no way to warn everyone if something like that happened there.”

“No PA?  Wow.  When was this school built?”

“The current building is from about 1950, I think I heard.”

“And they haven’t remodeled it to put in a PA?”

“I guess not.  But hopefully they will now.”

“Really.”


That night, I was sitting at my desk, writing out lesson plans and listening to Lawsuit again.  My roommate Jed walked into the large bedroom that we shared and asked what I was listening to.

“Lawsuit,” I said.

“Never heard of ’em,” Jed replied.

“They were from Jeromeville,” I explained.  “They used to play the Spring Picnic every year until they broke up at the end of 1996.  And it was in the paper this morning that the singer died.”

“Oh no.  What happened?”

“Suicide.”

“Wow.  That’s sad.”

“I do have some good news from my own life, though,” I said.  “Tomorrow afternoon, I have a second interview at Petersburg High School.”

“Congratulations!” Jed exclaimed.  “Do you want to work there?  Or are you just going through with the interview for practice?”

“I’m not really sure, honestly,” I said.  “I’ve only actually been to Petersburg twice.  Parts of it look kind of ghetto, but every city has those places, and I haven’t seen the school up close.”

“Where is Petersburg, anyway?”

“South of here.  On highway 42 east of Pleasant Creek and Los Nogales.  Between Pleasant Creek and Stockdale, but much closer to Pleasant Creek.”

Jed seemed to be thinking through everything he knew about the geography of this state, then finally he said, “Oh, okay.  I don’t really know that area well.  But good luck!”

“Thanks!  I’m going to have to miss my student teaching seminar class tomorrow, but the professor said that he understood we might have to miss class for interviews.”

“Of course.  If you’re training students for a specific job, the students need to be able to interview for that job.”

“Exactly!  I’m gonna leave straight from Nueces after student teaching, but I should have time to stop for lunch somewhere.”

“Sounds good.  Hope it goes well.  Hey, would you ever consider moving down south?”

“You mean, like Sand Hill?  Is this coming from your dad?” I asked.  Jed’s father was a high school vice principal at the opposite end of the state.

“Yeah.  He said there are a few schools in his district looking for math teachers.”

“I wasn’t planning on moving that far away, but if I don’t have much luck here in the next couple weeks, and he still has an opening, I’ll let you know.”

“I told him the same thing, that you wanted to stay closer to home, but he told me to ask you.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”


I listened to Lawsuit again the next afternoon on the drive from Nueces to Petersburg, across the Marquez Bridge.  Four years ago, there was a bad accident on this bridge, just after I had driven across it in the opposite direction, coming back to school after Christmas with my family in Plumdale.  My mother heard about the accident on the news and was convinced that I was dead.  I was annoyed with Mom’s excessive worrying, and lack of trust in my driving skills, but on the other hand, anything could happen to anyone at any time.

Tragic celebrity deaths were a sad part of life.  I would learn years later that some of Paul Sykes’ friends and family suspected that his death had been an accident, not a suicide.  I supposed that no one on this side of the afterlife would ever know for sure.  I knew the depths of despair that might lead people to want to end their lives, and I knew the feelings of rejection and loneliness that have led some to commit mass murders in public places, like the two gunmen at Columbine High.  These tragedies always made me wonder if I could have ended up a disturbed mass murderer, or a victim of suicide, had not my friends from freshman year introduced me to the love of Jesus Christ and the hope that he brings.  As a teacher in training, I hoped that my career would bring me opportunities to bond with troubled students and help them find hope and meaning in life, even if I would not be allowed to talk about Jesus directly working in a nonsectarian public school.

Although Paul Sykes was a very minor celebrity at most, I wondered if this was how people of my parents’ generation felt after the untimely deaths of people like Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon, or how my dad felt a few years ago when Jerry Garcia died.  Later that year, the Jeromeville Parks Department put a plaque on a small outdoor stage in a plaza downtown, dedicating the stage to Paul. I found it by accident at some point when I was exploring on my bike.  At least there was now something permanent to remember this man and his music.

As a music fan, I have also been through many band breakups in my lifetime, especially since I have been a fan of numerous local and obscure bands over the years.  Some of my all time favorite songs were written and recorded by long-defunct bands that most people have never heard of.  But through all the breakups, lineup changes, and tragic deaths, one thing remains true: great music never dies as long as someone is listening to it.

This is the actual unedited photo of the plaque. I removed the name and put it as a featured image so that the identity of the person in question would not be spoiled to people who saw this post in their feeds.

Readers: Do you have a favorite song by an obscure, long-defunct, and/or forgotten artist? Share it in the comments, and tell me a story about what the song means to you.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

[Lawsuit – Psychic Woman]

April 17, 1999.  My fifth Spring Picnic. (#214)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 2 Comments

Note to readers: About a month ago, I noticed that I had just finished an episode that was set in early March, and it was early March in real life as well. From that moment on, I have been trying to go back to writing weekly, so that the time of year in the story will stay approximately the same as the time of year in real life. But sometimes, episodes in the story have either more or less than a week passing between them, so it will not always be a perfect match. I may take a week off here and there if it is necessary and appropriate to keep the story matching the actual time of year. Right now, the story has moved a couple weeks ahead of real time, but a lot will happen to character-Greg in the next month or so of his life, so the next few episodes take place less than a week apart, and then the timing will match real life again soon.

I arrived on campus feeling that odd combination of cold and hot that comes after riding a bicycle for two miles on a cool morning.  I wore shorts and a t-shirt, because it was supposed to warm up this afternoon, but at a few minutes after eight in the morning, it was not very warm yet.

I parked my bike at the bike racks outside of Stone Hall, the building that housed the chemistry department.  Its room 199 was the largest lecture hall on campus.  I made a note to remember where my bike was, since Stone Hall was not usually my first stop in the morning on the day of the Spring Picnic.  There was already a long line snaking down from the entrance to 199 Stone, around the building, and south hundreds of feet almost all the way to Ross Hall.  I walked all the way to the end of the line and stood.

Ninety years ago, this campus in Jeromeville was an extension campus of its sister school, the University of the Bay, where students studying agriculture would get experience in the field, in a part of the state that actually had farms.  The school invited the public to a dedication of a new building and a presentation about the research being done there, with attendees instructed to bring a picnic lunch.  The event proved to be so popular that it became an annual tradition, evolving into a huge open house and festival held all across the campus of what eventually became the University of Jeromeville.  The event had been canceled a few times over the years, so today was officially the 85th Annual Spring Picnic.

I took out my guide to events and a pen while I waited in line.  The line did not appear to be moving yet, so it looked like I would be here for a long time.  This was my fifth Spring Picnic, and some of the recurring events I kept hearing about I still had yet to experience.  I had never milked a cow.  I had never put my hand inside the stomach of a cow that had a window and door to its stomach surgically added for research purposes, and I never would, since animal rights activists shut that event down a couple years ago.  And I had never seen the Chemistry Club’s show, which is what led me to arrive early enough this year to stand in line and get a ticket, hopefully.

In the guide, I marked the events that I was hoping to see.  The Math Club would be doing their exhibit for most of the day, so I could go there whenever I had time.  I would probably be able to see part of the parade, even if I ended up seeing the first performance of the chemistry show, since the parade lasted for over an hour. But everything was tentative for now, since I was not sure what time I would be seeing the chemistry show.  There were four performances, and tickets were free, but by the time I got to the front of the line, some of the performances might be out of tickets.  The lecture hall held close to four hundred students, but the line was so long that there were easily more than four hundred people in front of me.

I looked through the list of musical acts performing today.  At my first Spring Picnic freshman year, an older friend told me about a really good local band called Lawsuit.  I saw them that year, and again the following year, and then twice more at events that were not the Spring Picnic.  They broke up the following year, so I knew that they would not be performing, but I had been listening to their music again recently.  My friend Brennan Channing, a freshman with two older siblings who had also attended Jeromeville, knew Lawsuit and let me borrow their CD recently so that I could burn a copy on my computer.

I did see one musical act that I recognized: Carolyn C. Parry, at three o’clock at the Coffee House in the Memorial Union.  Good for Carolyn, I thought.  She made it in the music world, at least she made it big enough to play the UJ Coffee House for the Spring Picnic.

Carolyn C. Parry graduated from UJ last year, the same age as me.  I knew her from chorus, and she also was on the worship team for University Life, the college ministry of First Baptist Church of Jeromeville.  I went to Jeromeville Covenant and Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, but I had been to U-Life a few times over the years, and I had friends who went to U-Life.  I knew Carolyn well enough to say hi to.  The last time I saw her, several months ago, she mentioned that she was going to record a CD of original music and was looking into performing small shows like this.  Her appearance in the Spring Picnic program was the first I had heard of this endeavor of hers being successful.

The line slowly inched forward as I continued reading through the guide, marking events that I might want to check out.  I had been to enough Spring Picnics by now, though, that I knew that part of the fun was specifically not making a detailed plan in advance.  So much happened simultaneously during the Spring Picnic that it was impossible to see everything, and I enjoyed wandering around and seeing whatever I happened to find.  Between the exhibits about the research done on campus, food booths, sporting events, performances, and demonstrations, there was always plenty to discover during the Spring Picnic.  For now, though, I was stuck in this line, although not many of the events had begun this early.

The line at least seemed to be moving.  Every few minutes, I took a step forward, and I could see people leaving the front steps of 199 Stone, presumably with tickets in hand.  The people around me looked like a mix of students and non-students, and some students were with their families.  The Spring Picnic was a big enough event in this part of the state that it attracted people not otherwise affiliated with the campus, and some families came to visit their students for the occasion.  My parents and brother had come for last year’s Spring Picnic, but the wandering around and exploring part did not seem to appeal to them.  UJ always hosted a major track and field invitational on the day of the Spring Picnic, and my cousin Rick Lusk was on the track team for North Coast State University, so my family and I spent about two hours at the track, watching Rick’s two races and talking a lot with Rick’s parents while we waited between his two races.  Aunt Jane had given me the times that Rick would be running today; I planned to watch just one of them, whichever one fit in better with the rest of my schedule for the day, and say some quick hellos to the Lusks, but nothing that would require waiting there for two hours.  As I had explained to Aunt Jane over the phone, though, I could not plan any more specifically until I knew which of the chemistry show times I got tickets for.

The 9:00 chemistry show had already begun by the time I reached the front of the line, and I saw a sign saying that tickets for the 10:30 show had already been distributed.  “Are there any left for the 12:00 show?” I asked.

“Just a few left,” the guy handing out the tickets said.  “How many did you need?”

“Just me.”

“You’re good, then,” he said, handing me a ticket.  I put the ticket in my pocket and proceeded to Kerry Hall to see the Math Club’s exhibit.  I could get that out of the way early, since it opened earlier than many of the other exhibits, and it was near the route of the parade that would be starting at 10:00.  By the time I finished the math exhibit, the parade should be starting.

“Greg!” I heard a girl’s voice say as I approached the tables outside the front of Kerry Hall, about five minutes after I got my chemistry ticket.  I recognized Natalie Reese, a math major who was a year younger than me, at a table with polyhedron-shaped bubble wands, demonstrating different patterns formed by the films of soap in the wand, although bubbles blown from these wands always end up round.  “What’s up!  Welcome back!”

“Thanks,” I replied.  “I didn’t really go anywhere, though.  I’m still here, in the student teaching program.”

“Well, I haven’t seen you all year!  How’s student teaching?”

“It’s a lot.  But it’s going okay.  We had the job fair on campus this week, and now I’m just waiting to hear back from those school districts, for second interviews.”

“Good luck!”  Natalie turned to the guy running the table next to her and asked, “Mike?  Do you know Greg?”

“No,” he replied.  “Hi, Greg, I’m Mike.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Greg graduated last year.  He helped me through Math 168.”

“I’m sure you would have done fine without me,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Natalie replied, laughing.

I continued looking at the Math Club display and the adjacent Statistics Club display.  Everything was mostly the same as last year.  I said goodbye to Natalie, Mike, and a few other familiar faces, and walked toward the west side of the Quad, where the parade was about to start.

The most memorable part of the parade was the float for the university’s MBA program.  The students, as they did every year in the parade, wore tops of business suits with boxer shorts, carrying a sign that said “Cover Your Assets.”  I always chuckled at that.  But this year, when the float was about fifty feet past me, something broke on the float, and it stopped.  The students all stood around, trying to tell each other what to do, but no one seemed sure what actually needed to be done.  I overheard a man sitting next to me point out that this was typical of students studying to be business managers, that all they could do was delegate instead of actually fix the problem.  I laughed.

The MBA students did eventually figure out how to get their float moving again a few minutes later, and I sat for a while longer, watching floats and decorated cars go by representing student clubs, local businesses, community organizations, and local political figures, occasionally broken up by marching bands from various high schools and colleges from around the region.  I had a ticket for the 12:00 chemistry show, Aunt Jane had said that one of Rick’s races was supposed to be at 1:40, and Carolyn C. Parry’s show started at 3:00.  In between those three scheduled events I had plenty of time to wander around exhibits, exactly the way I wanted the Spring Picnic to turn out.  And I did wander.  I learned about the university’s experiments in making square-shaped tomatoes, easier to pack in boxes.  I saw a display about different types of soil in this region.  And I learned about diseases that affect common plants used in landscaping.


The chemistry show was one of the biggest disappointments I have ever experienced at a Spring Picnic.  It was not exactly bad, just definitely not worth the hype.  For one thing, I arrived ten minutes before the start of the show, but the room was already so crowded that I had to sit way in the back corner, after climbing over six other people.  The show began with attention-getting explosions on stage, chemical reactions causing bright lights and colored smoke, or as I preferred to think of it, the fun part of chemistry.  But the rest of the show was fairly routine to someone who had taken a full year of freshman chemistry.  I had seen many of the same demonstrations in class at some point.  Definitely not worth waiting in line for almost an hour this morning.  At least I knew in the future that I could skip this event in future Spring Picnics.

By the time I got back to the Quad, I had an hour before I had to go meet the Lusks at the track.  I saw a table where Nu Alpha Kappa, the fraternity for Latino students, was selling carne asada tacos; I stood in line for about fifteen minutes and bought two.  I walked to an empty area of the Quad and began eating.

“Greg,” I heard a familiar voice call out.  I looked up to see Brianna Johns walking toward me, holding a slice of the really good pizza from the Coffee House in the building right next to us.  She wore khaki shorts, white canvas shoes, and a green-gray tank top that seemed to match the color of her eyes, as anything she wore in any shade of blue or green seemed to, for some reason.  I thought she looked hot.

“Hey,” I said, smiling.  “How’s your Spring Picnic going?”

“Fun!  I was watching the parade earlier with Chelsea and Morgan, but Morgan went to go meet her parents, and Chelsea has lunch plans with Tim.  So I’m just hanging out for a while.  Are you here by yourself?”

“Yeah.  My parents came last year, and they didn’t really enjoy it all that much.”  I wondered about Chelsea and Tim having lunch together.  I had seen the two of them together a lot recently, and the way Brianna had worded her reply made it sound like they might officially be a couple now.  I was always last to figure these things out, but I did not want to ask and reveal how out of the loop I was.  “You want to sit down?” I asked.

“Sure.”  Brianna bent over and sat cross-legged on the grass across from me.  “Where’d you get those tacos?” she asked.

“Over there,” I replied, pointing.  “The Latino fraternity is selling them.”

“Nice!  They look yummy.”

“You have Coffee House pizza, though.  Also very yummy.”

“True!  What do you have planned for the rest of the day?”

“My cousin runs track for North Coast State.  He’s here at the track meet, so I’m going to go say hi to them later.  And then at 3, I’m seeing…” I trailed off, trying to remember if Carolyn and Brianna knew each other.  “Did you ever know Carolyn C. Parry?  She was my year, and she was on the worship team for U-Life.”

Brianna thought for a second.  “I don’t think I did.  I only went to U-Life a couple times freshman year, and that was a long time ago.  She’s here today?”

“Yeah, as a performer.”

“Performer?  Like, she’s playing music?”

“Yes!  I knew her from chorus.  The last time I saw her was last summer, I went to U-Life since they still meet in the summer, and she asked the group for prayer, because she had an opportunity to record a CD of some songs she wrote.”

“That’s so cool!  I might show up to that!  Where is it?”

“Three, at the Coffee House stage.”

“I’m supposed to meet up with one of my friends from last year, but if I’m not doing anything around that time, I’ll check her out!”

“Awesome!” I exclaimed.  Brianna and I continued talking for about half an hour, catching up on her classes, my job hunt, and our respective Bible study groups with Jeromeville Christian Fellowship.  When it came time to go see Rick run, part of me wished that Brianna could come with me, and that we could continue talking, but I also knew that if Aunt Jane saw me with a girl, she would immediately tell Mom, and I would never hear the end of it.


As I should have suspected, but did not think about until it was too late, the track meet ran late, and Rick’s race did not start until much later than scheduled.  I had plenty of time to tell the Lusks all about my year of student teaching and the disappointing chemistry show.  Rick was a little disappointed in his time in the 400 meter race, but I thought he looked respectable.  Rick’s sister Miranda, who was just finishing her last year of high school, made the trip with the rest of the family.  She had more of a reason to be interested in Rick’s track meet this year, because she would be joining Rick at North Coast State next year, also running for their track team.

Since the track meet was running late, I cut it close getting back to the Coffee House, arriving just a few minutes before Carolyn was scheduled to start playing.  Fortunately for me, the Coffee House stage was running late as well, and Carolyn was still setting up and tuning her guitar when I sat at an empty table at 2:59.

Carolyn looked up and surveyed the crowd.  “Greg!” she said, waving to me.  “You made it!  I’m setting up, but I’ll talk to you after the show, okay?”

“Yes,” I replied.

Carolyn’s music was exactly what I expected.  It was just her and an acoustic guitar.  She opened with a song about all the changes that come in life, but God staying the same through all of it, a good message for someone in that transition period between student life and adulthood.  In between songs, sometimes she shared stories about what inspired the songs.  One of the songs she performed was for her best friend, and one was a thought she had after hearing a really good sermon at church, for example.  Her music definitely had a Christian influence, but without being overly preachy or exclusive.  She closed the show with a beautifully upbeat song about chasing her dreams.

I walked straight to Carolyn’s table after the show closed.  “I would like to buy the CD, please,” I said.

“Great!” she replied enthusiastically, taking my money and handing me the plastic case.

“Great show.  I really liked it.”

“Thank you so much!  Thanks for coming!  So what are you doing this year?  Are you still in Jeromeville?”

“Yeah.  Doing the student teaching program, teaching math at Nueces High.  And right now in the middle of applying and interviewing for jobs in the fall.”

“Like, real teaching jobs?”

“Yes!  I’m nervous.  But through all this change, God remains the same, just like your song says.”

“Yes!”  Passing me a clipboard, Carolyn continued, “Sign up for my email list.  That way you’ll always know when the next show is.  And are you going to the Under Heaven Festival?  Have you heard about that?”

“I’ve heard some people talking about it, but I’m not really sure what it is.”

“Some people from U-Life and from Jeromeville Assembly of God got together to do this.  It’s a Christian music and art festival in Capital City, next month.  I’m going to be playing there; that’s my next show up this way.”

“Sounds good!  I’ll probably be there, then!”

“Do you know Sarah Masen?  She’s headlining.”

“I have one song of hers on a mixtape that we handed out to the youth groups at J-Cov.  ‘All Fall Down.’  It’s a good song.”

“She’s really good.  So make sure you stay for her show.”

“I will!

“I need to talk to these guys, but it was really good seeing you!  Hopefully I’ll see you next month?”

“Yeah!” I said as Carolyn turned to some people who appeared to be friends of hers.  I looked around the room, noticing that Brianna had never shown up, and then left the building, walking south across the Quad. (Brianna did ask me about Carolyn’s show the next morning, though, when I saw her at church.)


An important part of the Spring Picnic was the Battle of the Bands, where marching bands from Jeromeville and several other universities around the region meet on the shore of Spooner Lake, next to Marks Hall, and take turns playing songs late into the night until they are out of songs that they know.  After Carolyn’s set, I walked to Spooner Lake and watched the bands play for about an hour and a half, then walked back to where my bike was parked (near Stone Hall, I remembered) as the marching band from Capital State’s rendition of Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” gradually grew softer behind me.  These marching bands always seemed to play the songs I would least expect to be set to a marching band arrangement, but that was part of the fun.  I was not much of an Alanis fan, her voice was annoying, but if I had to pick a least annoying Alanis song, it was that one.

It would be fun if Carolyn became a girl rock superstar like Alanis Morissette.  Carolyn had a way better voice than Alanis, that was for sure, and her lyrics were more appealing to me than those of Alanis.  It was exciting to think that I was at one of her first shows.  Maybe that would be a claim to fame someday.  Seeing music at the Spring Picnic just did not feel the same after Lawsuit broke up, but maybe now Carolyn would be the new musical act to look forward to seeing every year at the Spring Picnic.

Readers: I probably asked this before, but tell me about an annual event in your area that you look forward to every year.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

And if you follow me on Instagram, I don’t post often these days, but I’ll be sure to post pictures of this year’s Spring Picnic, later this month.

[Alanis Morissette – You Oughta Know – warning, song contains explicit language]

April 13-16, 1999.  Job interviews and unsettling coincidences. (#213)

~ Greg Dennison ~ Leave a comment

Disclaimer: While something similar to the events in this story surrounding the band Watching the Geese actually happened to me, Watching the Geese is not the actual name of a band that played worship music, as far as I know. I used Keith Green’s original 1982 recording of the song mentioned in the story for this episode’s song. Neither Mr. Green, who was deceased by 1999, nor any of his band members had any connection to the events that inspired this story.

“Hey, Greg,” Mr. Bowles greeted me as I walked into his classroom at the start of fourth period.  This was the class that I was just observing and helping as part of my student teaching; I was not going to take over and start teaching the class.  It was in the room next to Mrs. Tracy’s geometry class that I had taken over, so I usually got to Mr. Bowles’ classroom before most of the students.

“Hi,” I said.

“How are you?”

“Kind of nervous.  The education job fair at UJ is this week.  I’ve never interviewed for teaching jobs before.”

“You’ll do fine.  You really know your stuff.  You’ll get a job wherever you want,” Mr. Bowles said reassuringly.

“I hope so,” I replied.

Mr. Bowles’ class was Honors Algebra II, full of strong academic students who were mostly very nice and well-behaved.  One student from this class, a sophomore girl named Colleen McKinney, sat in the desk next to where I sat, and she was always especially friendly toward me.  Today, as I was headed to my usual seat, Colleen asked, “Did you say you’re going to the education job fair at Jeromeville this afternoon?”

“Yeah.  All of us in the student teaching program signed up to be interviewed for jobs.”

“My dad is going to be there.”

“Oh yeah?  He’s a school administrator?”

“Yes.  For Petersburg School District.”

“Oh!” I said.  “I’ll probably see him, then.  I applied there.”

As Mr. Bowles taught the lesson, I sat there, processing what Colleen just said.  She attends Nueces High, so presumably she lived in Nueces.  Why, then, did her dad work in Petersburg?  Petersburg was forty miles away from Nueces by road, with a toll bridge in between. Did people actually commute that far?  Or were Colleen’s parents divorced, and she lived in Nueces with her mom, and her dad lived in Petersburg?  I never did find out, but over the years I came to learn that many school administrators did in fact live far from their jobs, possibly because they wanted privacy from people in the community who disagreed with them, and also because their jobs paid well.

Interestingly enough, this was not the first weird coincidence that had happened recently involving Colleen’s family.  A couple weeks ago, she asked me what I was doing for spring break, and I mentioned that I was not going to be able to visit my parents like I usually did, since my classes at the university did not have the same spring break.  Colleen asked where my parents lived, and when I started to explain to her where Plumdale was, since most people did not know, she replied, “I know where that is! My Grandma McKinney lives right near there, in Gabilan.” I mentioned this to my mother, who grew up in Gabilan and seemed to know everyone whose family has been there for a long time.  Mom said that she knew of two McKinney brothers when she was growing up, David and Reuel; I found it interesting that both McKinneys had Old Testament names, but one name was much more common than the other these days.  Mom said that she hoped Colleen’s dad was David, because one of Mom’s childhood friends knew the McKinneys well and always used to say that David was cute and Reuel was ugly.

It bothered me the way Mom always said things like that.  To Mom, commenting on people’s appearance was a big joke, but it was hard to get what Mom said out of my head when I actually had to interact with that person. So, that afternoon at the job fair, when I saw the names of the people who would be conducting the interviews, and I read “Petersburg School District – Reuel McKinney, associate superintendent,” I tried hard to focus on the task at hand and not blurt out anything about him being the ugly brother.  I was about to meet this man face to face, and he may have the power to determine my fate for the following school year.

I did not find Reuel McKinney particularly ugly, but I was a guy, so I did not know what Mom and her friends considered cute or ugly back in the 1960s.  He called my name and introduced himself; I shook his hand and followed him to his table.  When we sat down, I asked him, “Aren’t you Colleen’s dad?”  Although I was not going to say anything about his past connection to my mother, I figured that Colleen seemed to like me as a teacher, so it might help my chances of getting a job if I had approval from a family member of his.

“Yes,” Mr. McKinney replied, looking confused.  “How do you know my daughter?”

“I’m a student teacher at Nueces High.  I’m helping out in her math class, with Mr. Bowles.”

“Oh!”  Mr. McKinney looked at my résumé, and continued, “Student teacher, Nueces High.  I see that now.”

“Yes.  She told me that you would be at this job fair.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Mr. McKinney said, smiling, looking at his notes.  “Let’s get to the important questions.  Tell me how you go about planning lessons.”

“I tend to start with what’s in the teacher’s edition,” I explained.  “I outline what I’m going to say, what problems I’m going to work out, any important definitions the students need.  But I’ll make changes if I need to, from what I’ve noticed in class.  Sometimes I can tell what I need to spend more time on by the things they struggle with in class, and on their homework.  And I also use that to decide which homework problems to assign.”

Mr. McKinney nodded as he wrote something down, then he continued, “Tell me about your philosophy of classroom management.”

I took a deep breath, knowing that this was not my strength as a teacher, but maybe speaking in theoreticals, I could make it sound like I knew what I was doing.  “When a student isn’t doing what he or she is supposed to, first I make sure to communicate clearly to the student what they should be doing.  If the misbehavior continues, we have a room at Nueces High where we can send students who need a time out from the classroom.”

“Room Two,” Mr. McKinney said.  “I’ve heard about that.  Petersburg High doesn’t have that currently, unfortunately.”

I thought quickly, then said, “In that case, the next step would probably be something like after school detention.  And when it gets to that point, I’d contact home to make sure the parents know what is going on.  And if the student is still misbehaving after these more minor interventions, then I’ll send them out on a class suspension, and call home again.”

“Makes sense.”  Mr. McKinney took some more notes, then continued the interview.  He asked for my own self-assessment of my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher.  I said that my strength was the subject matter itself, and my weakness was that I tended to wait a little too long for behavior problems to correct themselves without intervention, and I was learning that they usually did not.  He also asked how I assign grades, and how I work with students who have special needs to make sure their needs are met.  When the interview ended, I shook his hand again and told him, “Tell Colleen I’ll see her tomorrow.”

“I will,” he replied, smiling.


After a few more interviews, I went home and ate dinner, knowing that I had papers to grade at some point tonight.  After dinner, I sat at my desk and looked through my CDs, trying to decide what to listen to while I worked.  On top of my CD shelf was a disc that did not belong to me, by a band I had never heard of until a few days ago called Watching the Geese.  Darius Curtis from church had just come up to me Sunday after the service, handed me the Watching the Geese CD, and said, “Here.  You have to listen to this.  It’s so good.”  I thought this was odd, since Darius had never talked much with me about music, let alone given me music to borrow.  I listened to it once Sunday afternoon; it was worship music, the type that might be sung in church, and Darius was right, it was pretty good.

I put the Watching the Geese CD in the drive on the computer and began the process of making a copy of the CD, something that I had just acquired the ability to do a few months ago when I bought this computer.  The process took a long time; I had to wait for every song to copy to the computer’s hard drive, then remove the disc, replace it with a blank one, and wait for the computer to write the songs that were now saved on its hard drive to the blank disc.  At the speed of a typical home computer in 1999, the whole process took around an hour, giving me plenty of time to get papers graded while I wanted.  But I was in a mood to procrastinate, so I did not get out my papers to grade right away.

Instead, I opened the case of the Watching the Geese CD and took out the booklet with the credits.  I glanced at the photo of the band and began reading below that.  Watching the Geese was the worship team employed by a large Christian retreat center called Sugar Pine Lake Bible Camp.  I had never been to Sugar Pine Lake, but I had seen it on a map, in the mountains east of Ashwood, probably about a four hour road trip from here.  I had listened to the CD twice now; Watching the Geese had two vocalists, one male and one female, as well as the usual guitar, bass, and drums.  After I read the paragraph detailing the band’s connection to Sugar Pine Lake Bible Camp, I continued reading.  The male vocalist was named Jonathan Torres, the female vocalist was named Cindy Houck, the guitarist was–

I did a double take as I felt a jolt of adrenaline rush through my body.

I looked at the band photo a second time, at the short, slightly chubby blonde girl standing second from the left.  It was not a great photograph, and it was small on the page, but yes, that was definitely Cindy Houck, crossing paths with my life now a third distinct time.

Twelve years ago, I was in fifth grade, living in Gabilan. I was part of a pull-out program at my school where, a couple times a week, the students who were identified as gifted would leave their regular classes for about an hour for special enrichment activities.  The group from my class often did things together with the fourth grade gifted students, and a friendly blonde girl from the fourth grade gifted group named Cindy Houck would often smile and say hi to me.  I was just starting to get over my girls-have-cooties phase, and while I never knew Cindy well, I always found her friendliness comforting, in a world where most kids were mean to me for no reason.

A few years later, I moved from Gabilan to Plumdale, about ten miles away, in a different school district.  When I was in tenth grade, I was looking through the yearbook and found Cindy Houck in there as a freshman.  Our elementary school normally fed to Gabilan High, so she must have coincidentally also moved some distance to the north at some point.  We had a class together the following year, but I never said anything about having known her in elementary school, nor did she acknowledge that she knew me.  I always found strange coincidences like this unsettling and disturbing. Also, my years in elementary school were not happy ones, and I wanted to put all that behind me, even though Cindy was not part of the bad memories of elementary school.

I never knew what happened to her after high school.  Apparently she was now working at Sugar Pine Lake Bible Camp, on the worship team.  And for some reason, Darius Curtis had just felt an overwhelming urge to lend me this particular CD after church last week so I could listen to it.  I did not know whether Cindy had grown up in a Christian family or found Jesus later in life, but if she had grown up Christian, that might explain part of the reason she was nice to me in elementary school when most people were not.

But what would I do with this information now?  I ended up doing nothing.  I never really knew Cindy that well, so if I were to attempt to contact her at Sugar Pine Lake Bible Camp and tell her that I heard her band’s music, and I remembered her from two separate times in my life, that would probably not be received well.  But it made me wonder if I was going to keep crossing paths with Cindy every six years or so.


The following afternoon, I had more job interviews.  Dr. Van Zandt had canceled our afternoon seminars on the days of the job fair, so that we could have time for all of our interviews.  My first one on that day was with Nueces School District, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the interviewer’s name: “Martin Garrett, principal, Nueces High School.”  The principal of the school where I was already student teaching.  A familiar face.  Then I got a little nervous when I saw the names for my next interview after that, with Blue Oaks School District: “Ralph Stevenson, principal, Granite Lake High School; Maria Vasquez, vice principal, Blue Oaks Middle School.”  I sat in my chair, uncomfortably trying to figure out what to say to Mr. Stevenson, how to figure out whether he remembered me, and if so, how to avoid the obvious sensitive topic, when I heard Mr. Garrett call me.

“Hello, Greg,” Mr. Garrett said after sitting at the table opposite me.  “Good to see you here.”

“You too,” I replied.

“I can kind of skip the first question, since I already know you.  So let’s get right to it.  Describe to me what a typical day looks like in your classroom.”

“Students walk in, and I have a problem on the board for them to work on while I take attendance.  Then I take questions on the previous day’s homework, or sometimes I’ll have a problem from the homework that I know I want to go over. In the classes that use the CRM curriculum, there will already be an exploratory problem in their book for them to do, so I have them try that problem and discuss it in groups.  Then we discuss as a class, and they write the important information in their notebook.  For the rest of the period, students work on more problems, discussing them with each other, and I’ll walk around watching what they’re doing, and asking questions to get them to discuss their learning.  This also gives me an idea of what they might be struggling with. The classes that don’t use CRM, I tend to use a similar structure.”

“Okay,” Mr. Garrett replied, taking notes on a clipboard.  “Tell me about your classroom management strategy.”

The interview with Mr. Garrett was relatively predictable; by now, the second day of the three-day job fair, I was starting to notice that most of these interviewers asked very similar questions.  At the end of the interview, Mr. Garrett gave me a look that suggested unfortunate news.  “What can I say,” he said.  “You’re doing a great job at Nueces High, we’d love to hire you, but we don’t have any openings for math this year anywhere in the district.”

I nodded sadly.  “That’s what I’ve heard,” I said.

“We’ll keep your application on file if anything opens up, but I just want to be honest, it’s not likely at this point.”

“I understand.”

Mr. Garrett shook my hand and said that he would see me tomorrow.  I went back to the waiting room, feeling a little discouraged, thinking about my upcoming interview with Blue Oaks School District.  Blue Oaks was in the foothills about forty miles east of Jeromeville, but I had just learned recently that the neighboring community of Granite Lake was in the same school district as Blue Oaks.  From what I knew, Granite Lake was a fairly affluent community; that might be an interesting place to teach, with parents who likely valued education, but rich parents could also be demanding, and there was no way I could afford to live in Granite Lake.

“Greg?” a man asked, walking into the waiting room.  I did not recognize him right away, but it had been a long time, and I never really knew Mr. Stevenson well. I mostly only remembered the name, and the thing I had heard about him after the fact.  I stood up, walked toward the man, and he introduced himself, saying, “Ralph Stevenson.  Nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said, a little nervously.  So far he showed no indication that he remembered me.  Back at the interview table, his colleague, Mrs. Vasquez, introduced herself.  Mr. Stevenson had a copy of my résumé right in front of him, he had access to all of the pertinent information, so I decided to just say it now, while giving no hint that I knew something that may not be public knowledge.  “Didn’t you used to be at Plumdale High?” I asked.

Mr. Stevenson looked at me for a few seconds, slightly surprised.  He looked down at my résumé, then back at me, and smiled.  “Yes!” he replied.  “Wow.  That was a while ago.  I was vice principal there.  I see you went to Plumdale High?”

“Yes.”

“Honestly, I don’t remember you, but, let’s see, if you were class of ’94, then I would have left after your freshman year.  And you probably weren’t the kind of student who got sent to the vice principal’s office very often.”

“Right,” I said, nodding.  Not entirely true, but it would probably be good to let him keep thinking that.  I tended to deal more with my school counselor than with Mr. Stevenson on my bad days.

The questions I got from Mr. Stevenson and his colleague, Mrs. Vasquez, were again similar to what the other school administrators had been asking me.  After the interview, they said they would be in touch, and I thanked them.  As I began to walk back to the waiting room, I had a fleeting thought very out of character for me.  I imagined myself pulling Mr. Stevenson aside, looking him in the eye, and telling him, “Listen, Ralph.  I know why you aren’t at Plumdale High anymore.  You resigned after it got out that you and Mrs. Anderson were having an affair.  Do your bosses at the district office in Blue Oaks know this?  If you don’t want them to find out, then you better offer me a job.”  Of course, I would never do anything like that.  Blackmail was not a good job-hunting strategy for someone just beginning his teaching career.  And technically I had no proof of Mr. Stevenson’s past; I had heard this secondhand from an older student a while after Mr. Stevenson left Plumdale High.  I never had Mrs. Anderson as a teacher in high school, but I knew her better than I knew Mr. Stevenson, and I totally would not have put it past her to have an affair with a supervisor.  I dismissed this thought and returned to the waiting room, to wait to be called by my next interviewer, one Mr. Robert Harbison of Jorgensen High School, next to Tyler Air Force Base, just outside of Nueces and Fairview.


A couple days later, I was driving to Nueces for student teaching, listening to the Watching the Geese CD.  I heard Cindy Houck’s voice sing “There Is A Redeemer,” harmonizing with her bandmate Jonathan Torres.  This song sounded like a classical hymn, but according to the liner notes of the CD, it was originally recorded in 1982 by Keith Green, a Christian singer whose name I was vaguely familiar with.  I thought back to all the strange coincidences that had happened to me recently.  I had an interview with Mr. McKinney, whom my mom’s childhood friend had had a crush on many decades ago.  I also had an interview with Mr. Stevenson, the supposedly disgraced former vice principal of my own high school.  And both of these connections to me, as well as my connection with Cindy Houck, happened back in Santa Lucia County, a hundred and sixty miles from Jeromeville.  

I did not cross paths with Cindy six years later, as I had wondered if I would.  As of now, I have not heard from her, or heard her name anywhere, since borrowing Darius’ CD of Watching the Geese.  I did not see Colleen McKinney or her dad again after that school year, and I never saw Mr. Stevenson again.  But I have had many other strange coincidences happen in my life.  It seems that, while I can remove myself from emotionally unhealthy situations, I can never expect to completely run from my past.  Somehow, somewhere, someone or something from the past would always catch up to me.  I did not have to let uncomfortable moments in the past define me anymore, but I also could not ignore the fact that they happened.  “Jesus, my redeemer, name above all names,” Cindy and Jonathan sang through my car speakers.  Jesus was my redeemer, and he could redeem my uncomfortable past and give me a future, hopefully involving a job at one of the school districts that had interviewed me this week.

Readers: Have you ever unexpectedly met up with someone from the past in an unusual situation? Or has there ever been anyone in your life who keeps reappearing unexpectedly every few years? Tell me about it in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

[Keith Green – There Is A Redeemer]

Late March – Early April, 1999.  Preparing for job interviews. (#212) 

~ Greg Dennison ~ 6 Comments

“Becky?  Kayla?” I asked, as I walked past their desks.  “Can I talk to you for just a minute after class?  You’re not in trouble, and I can write you a pass in case you get to fourth period late.”

“Sure,” Kayla replied.

“Okay,” Becky added.

The bell rang about five minutes later, and as the students filed out, I gestured for Becky and Kayla to come talk to me.  After everyone left, I said, “I didn’t pass back your homework today for a reason.  I’m putting together a portfolio of student work, so that when I apply for jobs next year, I can show what my students can do to the people who would decide whether or not to hire me.  I’m going to copy your papers with your names covered up, and then give them back tomorrow, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” Becky said.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Kayla said.  “Why are you applying for a new job?  Are you leaving Nueces High?”

“I’d love to stay here if I can,” I explained.  “But I’m just here for this year, as part of my student teaching class at Jeromeville.  I’m going to apply for a job here, but Mrs. Tracy said that she doesn’t think any of the other math teachers are leaving, so they might not need a new math teacher here.”

“Oh,” Becky said.

“I hope you stay here!” Kayla exclaimed.  “You’re a good teacher.”

“Thank you so much!  Let me write you two passes, so you have time to get to class.”  I grabbed two pieces of scratch paper and wrote and signed notes for each student excusing them if they arrived to class tardy. Then I headed two doors down the hall to Mr. Bowles’ classroom and his Honors Algebra II class I was assigned to observe and assist in.

The last day of class for winter quarter at the University of Jeromeville was approaching, and I had a big project due for the seminar class with Dr. Van Zandt and the other math student teachers.  For this project, we had to put together a portfolio to bring to the job fair in April.  Representatives from school districts all over the state would be coming to Jeromeville on three consecutive afternoons next month, where they would be conducting preliminary interviews for open teaching positions.  Our portfolios were to include our résumés, letters of recommendation, undergraduate transcripts, score reports from the basic skills test that all teachers in the state needed to take, and samples of student work.  Becky and Kayla had approved of my use of samples of their work, as had the only two students from Basic Math B first period who still had an A in the class.  I was a little nervous asking them, I did not want any of them to think I was being weird wanting to copy their work.  But, fortunately, all of them approved.

I chose Becky because she had been making a great effort lately to improve her grade, and it had paid off.  She had a D+ on her second quarter report card, and currently, late in the third quarter, she was getting a B.  I was not sure of what had caused the sudden improvement in Becky’s work, if her parents saw her grade and were pushing her harder, or if she took the initiative herself to bring her grade up.  It was possible that she was just naturally having an easier time with the material, although this did not entirely explain her success.  The College Ready Mathematics curriculum used at Nueces High used a technique called spiraling.  Material from previous lessons and chapters continued to appear in homework assignments, as well as quizzes and tests, for the rest of the year.  Becky got an A on the previous unit test, even successfully answering problems from the two units before that one, so she was doing something differently compared to earlier in the year.  Kayla, a consistent B student, I had chosen for my portfolio for a different reason: she had unusually clear and legible handwriting that would look good when showing her work to others.

I had already written my résumé.  I did not like it, I never felt comfortable doing things that felt like selling myself, but writing a résumé was sadly necessary in this world of job hunting.  I had been told repeatedly that a résumé is just a foot in the door, to make oneself stand out enough to get a job interview.  I was not sure if I stood out, but I tried to include as many things as I could to portray myself in a positive light.  I mentioned my research internship in Oregon from a couple years back.  I mentioned that I had worked as a math tutor with the Learning Skills Center on campus.  I also had a section on my résumé where I listed various computer-related experiences.  I said that I had experience coding in C++.  I had taken an entire class two years ago on C++, and with technology in education being one of the big fads of that day, this may catch the eye of some human resources employee somewhere.  I also wrote that I had experience coding web pages in HTML, even though my experience was very minimal, just enough to make a silly personal website, and to post the Dog Crap and Vince stories with pictures.  That may come in handy for designing a simple, straightforward school web site eventually.

I also had dreaded for a long time asking for letters of recommendation.  Dr. Van Zandt told us that he would be writing letters for all of us in the program, but most job applications require at least three letters of recommendation, and having even more than this might prove useful in case one of the letter writers were to say something honest but unflattering.  I had had so many bad days as a student teacher that I was afraid to know what Mrs. Tracy and Ms. Matthews would say about me in their letters of recommendation, but I asked them for letters anyway since they were most familiar with my teaching.  Mrs. Tracy had finished hers first, and as I read over what she wrote for the first time, I felt a wave of relief to see that it was positive.  Mrs. Tracy’s letter began with the typical introduction, explaining that I was a student at the University of Jeromeville School of Education assigned to her geometry class as a student teacher.  She continued with more specifics:

As a high school teacher with twenty-five years of experience, I have observed numerous positive teaching traits with Mr. Dennison.  First, he has an excellent command of the subject matter, and is knowledgeable and confident in mathematics.  This has allowed us to work on teaching and classroom management skills.  Second, he is always prepared for class with lessons, examples, and testing materials.  He patiently works with students, correcting them gently in a positive way while building understanding of the problem.  Also, Mr. Dennison accepts criticism well and welcomes suggestions on improving his teaching.  He sees this as a challenge to help himself become a better teacher, which is a rare quality in a student teacher beginning his career!

Mr. Dennison is showing noticeable improvement in the areas of timing lessons and classroom discipline.  He is learning to create a disruption-free environment and maintain control of the classroom.  With experience, he will continue to get better in this, as we all do.

My experience working with Mr. Dennison has been positive.  I believe that he will be a positive asset to any school faculty.

A few days later, I got a similar letter from Ms. Matthews, the master teacher for Basic Math B.  It was shorter, but mostly made the same points about my command of the subject matter and preparation, as well as still improving on things like discipline.  Thankfully, she left out the part about the time I left the students unattended for a couple minutes.  I felt that this letter put me in a positive enough light to include in my portfolio.

Just in case I needed a fourth letter, I had sent an email a few weeks ago to Dr. George Samuels, the math professor who two years ago had first encouraged me to go into teaching.  Dr. Samuels was the co-author of a high school textbook series that was widely used around the state, and when he first asked if I had ever considered teaching, he mentioned that the field of education needed more strong mathematical minds teaching students.  Having a letter of recommendation from a familiar name in the world of math education might help make my application stand out.

Before I left Nueces High that day, I made copies of Becky and Kayla’s work, as well as the two assignments from students in Basic Math B.  I covered up their names as I ran everything through the copy machine.  I wished that I had one of Becky’s assignments from a few months ago, so that I could have shown in my portfolio how much she was improving, but I had no reason to think to save one of her papers back then.

I checked my email when I got back to the house, and Dr. Samuels had written to me to say that his letter of recommendation was done, and that I could stop by his office this afternoon to pick it up.  As I walked down the hall toward his office, I passed the office of Dr. Thomas, my other favorite professor, and wondered if I should have asked her for a recommendation as well.  I had not asked, since I already had four people lined up, and of my two favorite professors, Dr. Samuels worked more closely with secondary education than Dr. Thomas, so his recommendation might carry more weight.  But if any of the letters I had were too unflattering to include in the portfolio, I could then ask Dr. Thomas for one.  The portfolio assignment was due in a couple days, but the job fair was still a few weeks away, and there was no requirement that the portfolio include the exact same letters of recommendation that I would give to the people who were hiring.

Dr. Van Zandt’s portfolio assignment was not just an academic exercise.  The UJ School of Education allowed students to keep placement files, with all of our résumés, transcripts, and letters of recommendation in one convenient place, to send out with job applications.  I would be able to reactivate this placement file at any time in the future that I was applying for a job in teaching.

For the upcoming job fair, I would submit all of the necessary paperwork to the School of Education Placement Office.  I had a list of all the school districts who would send people here to UJ to conduct interviews.  Some districts listed exactly what subjects and grades they had open positions for, but many used the hiring pool method, where they kept job applications on file regardless of what positions were open, and they contacted applicants as needed.  Most of the school districts coming to Jeromeville for the job fair were from the northern half of the state, with a few from farther away.  I had to turn in a list by the end of the week saying which school districts I was applying to, and the Education Placement Office would come up with a schedule of when each district would interview me.

I had been reading through the list of school districts that would be attending, trying to decide where to apply.  Casting a wide net, sending a lot of applications, would be a good idea, although each one required filling out paperwork, and some asked for a cover letter.  I also had ruled out several places I did not want to work.  For example, I had the impression that the Capital City School District included a lot of rough schools in run-down urban areas.  Not really the kind of place I was interested in.

I did apply to most of the school districts in the suburbs of Capital City; suburban communities seemed more like what I was used to.  Some of these communities had their own school district, some school districts included two or three distinct communities, and some cities and communities were split between multiple school districts.  Control of public schools in this state was highly localized, and local school districts were completely independent of city councils and county boards of supervisors, which led to this patchwork of school districts of widely varying sizes.

The school district for Jeromeville was not attending the job fair, but I did apply to most of the school districts adjacent to Jeromeville: Woodville, Silvey, and of course Nueces.  I also applied to Fairview, just south of Nueces.  Tyler Air Force Base was located between Fairview and Nueces, and it had its own school district, which also included a few surrounding neighborhoods and rural areas; I applied there too.

I applied to a few other places that were a little too far to commute: Silverado, across the hills west of Fairview.  Riverview and Petersburg to the southwest, across the lower part of the Capital River.  Positas, about another twenty miles south of Riverview over some low mountains.  To the southeast, down the Valley, I applied in El Monte and Ralstonville.

When I turned in my list to the Education Placement Office, I was given applications to fill out for each school district.  On these applications, my information typically needed to be filled out neatly within small spaces on the paper, and my handwriting was messy enough that filling out these applications by hand would probably not impress those who would be offering me a job.  Fortunately, I found a typewriter in the office at Nueces High that was free for teachers to use, so I spent two entire prep periods that week carefully typing my information into all of these applications.

Later that week, during the student teaching seminar, Dr. Van Zandt announced that our letters of recommendation were ready.  I waited nervously as he passed out the letters.  He handed me my letter, and I read it, anxious at first, but unable to hide my smile as I read more.  This was by far the most positive and glowing letter of recommendation that I had ever received for anything.  After the opening paragraph, in which he explained the nature of the program I was in and his role as the supervisor of the program, he continued to write about my qualifications.

Mr. Dennison has had a variety of experiences student teaching at Nueces High School, including Geometry, Basic Math B, and Algebra II Honors.  His experiences have allowed him to teach students with many different academic abilities and socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.  As a student teacher in the UJ certification program, Mr. Dennison has studied strategies for teaching students whose home language is not English, and he has practiced these strategies in his student teaching.

Mr. Dennison is a strong mathematics student with a great deal of mathematical knowledge.  He graduated with honors, with a 3.95 GPA, and received the UJ Department Citation for Outstanding Academic Achievement.  Mr. Dennison is the strongest mathematics student I have ever had in ten years of supervising this program.  He plans his teaching well, and has developed a variety of instructional strategies.  He is skilled at using computers, including experience in the classroom with software such as Excel and The Geometer’s Sketchpad.  He is willing to try different teaching approaches, and he understands the importance of being organized and prepared.

Mr. Dennison enjoys teaching and values the power of mathematics for students.  I am pleased to recommend Gregory Dennison for a teaching position in mathematics.

Wow, I thought after reading Dr. Van Zandt’s letter.  That was quite the positive recommendation.  Maybe I had a better chance of getting a teaching job than I thought I would.

I was in the odd situation that I did not get a spring break that year, because UJ and Nueces High had different weeks off.  During UJ’s week off, I still had to do my student teaching every day at Nueces High in the morning, but then I was free for the rest of the day.  The following week, Nueces High was off, and Dr. Van Zandt canceled the student teaching seminar for some of the days, since we were all teaching at schools that had that week off.  But two new classes for spring quarter started that week, so I had each of those classes twice during the week in the afternoon.  Even with that schedule, though, those two weeks were less stressful than usual, since I had half the day free each week.

During that time, on the days when I had student teaching in the morning, I took some day trips after student teaching was done, to places I was not very familiar with but had applied for jobs.  I wanted to get a feel for what the schools and neighborhoods were like.  One day I covered Silverado, Fairview, and Tyler Air Force Base, or at least the adjacent neighborhoods since I could not get on base.  Fairview was a bit rougher than I expected, but the area around Tyler Air Force Base seemed okay, and I would probably get a lot of supportive parents at a school with a lot of military families.  Silverado seemed like a wealthy area.  It was in a well-known wine growing region, the kind of place that attracted rich tourists on day trips for wine tasting.  I was not sure that I would be able to afford to live in Silverado on a teacher’s salary.

On another day, I headed south to drive around Riverview, Petersburg, and Positas.  I had only been to Riverview and Petersburg once each, and only to Positas a few times, and I had never seen any of those cities other than from the freeway.  Riverview and Petersburg were rougher than I expected them to be, although each city, Riverview especially, also had newer neighborhoods that seemed nicer and better kept.  Positas looked more like a normal suburb, but it was home to technology jobs, and a research laboratory run by the same public university system as UJ.  I was not sure how this would affect the culture, if I would feel out of place teaching the children of technology big shots, or if that background might produce students who appreciated the importance of learning mathematics.

I had plenty of new music to keep me busy during those trips.  I had recently bought two new albums on CD: R.E.M.’s Up, and the self-titled album from Sixpence None the Richer that had “Kiss Me” on it.  That song was rapidly becoming a guilty pleasure of mine, and the rest of the album was good too.  R.E.M.’s newer stuff was not terrible, but it was definitely different from the R.E.M. hits I had grown up with in my teens.  Some songs were more electronic sounding than what I was used to from R.E.M.  In addition to playing these albums multiple times in the car, I also listened to some of the mix CDs I had been making.  None of those places I went was far from Jeromeville, but none of them was particularly close either, and with all the time I spent driving around in each city, getting a feel for the areas and seeing all the high schools and middle schools up close, those two trips had me away from home for several hours each time.

When the seminar class began again, the same day that Nueces High started school again after spring break, Dr. Van Zandt gave us all our schedules for the upcoming job fair.  Each interview time slot was only fifteen minutes long, spread out among three afternoons as people’s schedules allowed.  I took a deep breath as I read the schedule.  This was starting to feel real.  I cast a wide enough net that I had fourteen job interviews, now scheduled with an actual date and time just a little over a week away.  It felt undeniable now that the next stage of my life was arriving in a hurry.

Readers: When did you realize that you were growing up, and a new stage of your life was coming? Tell me about a time like that in the comments.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

[R.E.M. – Daysleeper]

March 11, 1999.  Not a typical Thursday. (#211)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 10 Comments

Jeromeville, being a university town, had an abundance of pizza places. Plenty of national and regional chains had locations in Jeromeville, even though the local culture frequently made a lot of noise claiming to be against chain stores.  The pizza place that most people heard about often in Jeromeville was called Woody’s, on G Street.  Woody’s was good pizza, but in my opinion only the second best pizza in Jeromeville.  The best pizza in Jeromeville was right on campus, at the student run Coffee House.

After I got home from student teaching at Nueces High School that day, I went straight to campus on my bike. So far, today felt like a typical Thursday during Fake Spring, sunny with a high of 78 degrees outside, and I felt like treating myself.  I parked my bike and walked into the Coffee House, on the west end of the Memorial Union building.  I bought two slices of pepperoni pizza, grabbed a copy of the Daily Colt, and went to find a spot on the Quad to sit on the grass and eat.  I read the paper as I ate, enjoying the feeling of warm sunshine on my skin, and the view of girls walking by wearing fewer clothes than they were a couple weeks ago when it was twenty degrees cooler and raining.

Just as I finished eating, I sensed someone standing near me.  I looked up to see a guy I had never seen before.  He appeared to be of Middle Eastern decent, with average height and build, very dark hair, and an olive complexion.  “Hi,” he said, handing me a flyer.  Confused, I took his flyer and read it, becoming even more confused as I did so.

IRANIAN STUDENT CLUB
at the University of Jeromeville
Every Thursday night, 106 Wellington
For more information: 555-0177

“I’m sorry,” I told the young man standing next to me.  “I think you have me confused with someone else.”

“No, you don’t know me,” he said.  “I just thought you might be interested in our club.  So you can meet and hang out with other Iranian students.  Check it out tonight, maybe?”  I just stared at him, not sure what to say, as he continued.  “I’ll see you later!”

“Have a good one,” I managed to blurt out, still not quite understanding what had just happened.  Apparently this guy thought I was Iranian.  To my knowledge, I had no ancestors from Iran.  That was a new one for me; in this part of the United States, I was often mistaken for Mexican because of my dark brown, almost black, hair, but I had never been mistaken for Iranian before.

I got up a few minutes later to throw away the paper plate from the pizza.  As I walked toward the nearest garbage can, I spotted Brianna Johns walking toward me.  She was with Jill, a girl from Brianna’s year who also went to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, and a third girl I did not recognize.  Brianna wore denim shorts, flip-flops, and a pale bluish-green shirt that seemed to match the color of her eyes.  The last few times I saw Brianna, she was wearing some shade of blue or green, and it always seemed the same color as her eyes.  It was probably an optical illusion, I did not seriously believe that her eyes were changing color, but that was just another part of why I found her really pretty, in a friendly, down-to-earth, all-American girl-next-door kind of way.

“Hey, Greg!” Brianna said.

“Hi!” I replied.  “What’s up?”

“We’re going to give blood!  You wanna come with us?”

In the two seconds that followed, my mind kicked into gear, processing something that I was not at all expecting to hear.  Normally, when I saw my friends on campus and asked them what was up, I got answers like “going to class,” “studying,” “meeting a friend,” or “procrastinating.”  Not once had I ever been told “going to give blood.”  But before I could finish processing this response, my brain began processing another thought: here I was, standing face to face with an attractive friendly blonde girl, who was attempting to invite me to something.  So, therefore, I spoke out loud the only correct response: “Sure!”  I proceeded to drop all of my plans to spend the next hour catching up on reading, and I followed Brianna, Jill, and the other girl to wherever they were going to give blood.  I did at least remember to drop my greasy paper plate in the next garbage can I found.

While the other girls talked, my mind continued processing what was happening, now that I had committed to donating blood.  I remembered reading an article in the Daily Colt a few days ago that the local blood bank would be doing a blood drive on campus soon.  These blood drives happened twice a year, typically.  Usually I ignored them; giving blood was just never something I did.  I had nothing against giving blood, I just had never done it before.  I wondered what I was getting myself into, but before I said anything out loud, I realized that I had to keep my blood donation inexperience a secret.  Brianna might think that it was weird for me to be so quick to tag along to give blood when giving blood was an unfamiliar experience to me.

“How was your day?” Brianna asked me, snapping my mind back to reality.  It looked like we were headed to Freeman Hall, a building next to the Memorial Union that usually hosted performances and concerts.

“Not too bad,” I replied as she opened the door and the four of us walked inside the building. “Something weird happened right before I saw you, though.”  I told her about the guy who invited me to the Iranian Student Club.

“Really?  He thought you were Iranian?” she laughed.  “I guess I can kind of see it.”

“I guess, but it was just unexpected.  How was your day?”

“Nothing special.  Just had class.”

“Yeah.  I had student teaching this morning.  No major incidents.”

“That’s good!”

“A lot of students in Basic Math B just aren’t doing their work, though.  That’s frustrating.  Of course, if they did their homework, they probably wouldn’t be in Basic Math in the first place.”

“That’s true.”

I followed the others to a desk where employees of the blood bank were checking identification and signing us in.  I was moved to a desk where I was asked questions about whether I had engaged in certain risky behavior or traveled to certain parts of the world which might have infected me with bloodborne diseases.

Next, I was told to wait in a different part of the room.  Freeman Hall had removable seating, and a large section of seating had been removed to make room for the necessary chairs and equipment for up to five people to be giving blood at any given time.  All five chairs were in use; people sat at each chair, with needles in their arms and blood slowly filling plastic bags.  A phlebotomist sat or stood near each of them, monitoring the equipment.  My mind registered the irony in the fact that I had only shown up to give blood because I wanted to talk to Brianna, and I had hardly done that at all, and now she was nowhere to be found.  I was a little relieved when she walked up and sat next to me a few minutes later, shortly afterward joined by Jill and the third girl, whose name I still did not know.

I looked at my watch.  1:21.  “How long will we have to wait?” I asked.  “I have class at 2:10, all the way in Academic Building VIII.”

“You’ll make it,” Brianna said.  “We’re the only people waiting right now, and they checked you in first.”

“Good.”

“What class do you have?”

“It’s the daily seminar with the other math student teachers, where we talk about what’s going on in our classes, and sometimes the professor shares things related to working in education.”

“That doesn’t sound too hard!”

“Yeah. We’re going to start working on portfolios soon, so we can send them with résumés when we’re applying for jobs.”

“That’s right! I remember you saying that. Do you know anything more about where you’re going to apply?”

“Not really. I kind of want to stay nearby, but I’ve heard that Jeromeville public schools are a hard place to work.  A lot of the kids’ parents are university professors, and they have a reputation for being demanding.”

“That’s true!  I could see that!”

“So I’ll probably apply to as many schools as I can all over this part of the state.  If I get a job close enough to Jeromeville, I can stay here and commute.  I’d love to stay at Nueces High, if they’ll hire me.”

“That would be fun!” Brianna said.  “Then I can still see you at church and stuff.”

“Greg?” one of the phlebotomists called out.

“I guess it’s my turn,” I said.  I followed the phlebotomist to a large chair, the kind that one would find in a doctor’s office.  She put rubbing alcohol on a cotton swab and felt my arm, looking for a good place to put the needle.  When she found a good place, she spread the alcohol, and inserted the needle.  I winced as I felt the sharp metal pierce my skin, but it really did not hurt that badly.

“Have you done this before?” the phlebotomist asked me.

“No,” I replied.  “First time.”

She placed a rubber ball in the hand on the same side where the needle was.  “Squeeze this.  Moving your hand, using your muscles, that helps the blood flow faster,” she explained.  I did as she said and looked at the transparent tube coming out of the needle.  It quickly filled with thick deep-red blood.  The tube led to a bag at the other end, made of thick transparent plastic.

It took several minutes to get a full pint of blood.  When the bag was full, the phlebotomist clamped the tube, then removed the needle and placed a bandage on my arm.  I looked at my watch and saw I still had plenty of time to get to class, but apparently I was not done.  “Next, just go over there,” she said.  “They have snacks.  You’ll rest for a while, so you can recover.”

“Okay,” I said.  I felt fine, but I did what she said anyway, walking to a cluster of chairs around a table that had Oreo and Chips Ahoy cookies, crackers, and fruit.  I grabbed five Oreos and started eating.

“Feeling all right?” the man supervising this area asked me.  He handed me a sticker that said, “Hug Me: I Donated Blood Today.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We still want you to wait here at least five minutes, just in case.”

“Got it.”  My watch said 1:37, so I would make it to class in plenty of time if I stayed for five minutes.  I could stay twenty minutes and still get to class on time, and if they let me do that, that would mean more cookies and hopefully more time to talk to Brianna.

I was just removing the top from my fourth Oreo when Brianna sat next to me.  “You feeling okay?” she asked.  “You’re a big guy; you probably don’t pass out when you lose a pint of blood.”

“I feel fine.  By the way, what are your plans after you finish?  You’re a bio major, right?”

“Yes!  I want to go into research, so grad school.  No idea where.”

“That sounds intense.  I used to just assume I wanted to go to grad school.  But I went to Oregon to do a math research internship two years ago, and I realized I didn’t like it.”

“Good to realize it now!  Why didn’t you like it?  What is math research, anyway?”

“Proving new theorems.  But everything that’s easy to visualize and understand was proven hundreds of years ago, so it’d be about really weird, abstract stuff.”

“That doesn’t sound fun,” Brianna said.

“It wasn’t.”

“Being a teacher is probably a good choice for you, then!”

“Yes!”


After classes were over that day, I rode my bike home, parked it in the back, and walked back around the front, unlocking the door.  I heard video game music and battle sound effects coming from the living room in the back of the house, where Jed’s PlayStation was connected to the TV.  “Hey, Jed,” I called out.

“Hi, Greg,” Jed called back from the same part of the house as the video game music.  Jed had just recently bought the adventure game Final Fantasy VIII and had been spending almost all of his spare time playing it.  Its predecessor, Final Fantasy VII, now considered one of the greatest games of all time, had been Jed’s game of choice previously.  I tried Final Fantasy VII a few times, but it was extremely complicated, and I was just too busy to get fully immersed in a game of that magnitude.  I had not tried playing Final Fantasy VIII yet; it had only been released a couple weeks ago.  Jed had told me recently that he was planning on staying in Jeromeville over the summer and working as many hours as he could at the Coffee House on campus, so the PlayStation and Jed’s games would be here over the summer as well.  Maybe then I would have time to try Final Fantasy VIII.

I walked to my room, put my backpack down, and sat at my desk.  I peeled the back of the “Hug Me” sticker and stuck it on the frame of the bed loft.  I turned on the computer and waited for it to start up, then I connected to the dialup Internet in order to check my email.  I heard the familiar sounds of a phone call dialing, then the screeches of connecting to the Internet, then several seconds of silence as my messages downloaded, then a click as the modem disconnected from the phone line, and finally a ding that indicated new messages.  I looked up to see how many messages I had: one, from my mother.

From: peg_notbundy@aolnet.com
To: “Gregory J. Dennison” <gjdennison@jeromeville.edu>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 11:36 -0800
Subject: Re: hi

Hi!  How’s teaching going this week?  Any fun stories from the classroom?  I was talking to Aunt Jane today, and she said that she has a book that really got her through when she was a new teacher.  It’s called The First Days of School, or something like that, and I don’t remember the author’s name off the top of my head, but I think it was a Chinese sounding last name.  She said she thinks she has an extra copy that she can give you.  Have you heard of that book?

I knew that book.  The First Days of School, by Harry K. Wong.  We talked about that book earlier in the year in the seminar for student teachers, but it was not required reading for the class, so I did not own the book.  I had the impression that the book had some things that would be helpful to new teachers, but others that seemed to apply more to a different world than the one in which I would be teaching.  For example, I remember flipping through that book and seeing Dr. Wong quote anecdotally a teacher who visited her students at home early in the school year to get to know them better.  I just could not see that going over well in any scenario other than one where the teacher taught a self-contained elementary school class in a quaint small town where everyone knew each other.  Wherever I ended up teaching, I would most likely have far more than one class, many of the students would come from rough backgrounds, and a significant number would come from families that did not speak English.  But I would be gracious and accept Aunt Jane’s kind gift.  There was probably some useful information in there.  Aunt Jane, my mother’s younger sister, was a veteran small-town kindergarten teacher, and she had been excited for me ever since I decided I wanted to go into education.  I appreciated the encouragement and support.  I continued reading Mom’s message.

Mark’s last basketball game of the year is on Saturday, an away game against El Ajo High.  Mark’s team had an ok season, finishing in fifth place out of nine teams in the league.  The coach has been starting him the last few games, so that’s exciting.  If he keeps playing how he is, he’ll probably be a starter next year as a senior too.

I read an obituary in the paper this morning for a 22-year-old girl named Sandra Soto who died in a car crash.  She went to Plumdale High a year behind you.  Did you know her?  That name sounds familiar.  She was on Highway 11 heading back to school at Central Tech after being home in Plumdale for the weekend.  That’s so sad to pass away so young.  She was pretty.

I’m going to go for a walk.  It’s nice here.  Do you have nice weather?  Have a great rest of the week!

Love, Mom

I blinked.  I read the ending of that message again to make sure I actually read that right.  I did.  Then I went emotionally numb.  Sandra was really gone.

I had not seen Sandra in over four years, and I had not thought of her in quite some time.  We did not know each other well outside of school.  She was a cheerleader, and a dancer, and she dated football players.  Not exactly the crowd where a reclusive academic like me would hang out.  But I did know her.  We had Spanish class together when I was a senior and she was a junior, and she was always nice and friendly toward me.  And now I would never see her again.

I was not exactly sure how I was supposed to react to news like this.  Was it a bad thing that I was not crying?  Although I felt saddened by the news, the truth was that I had not thought about Sandra in a long time, and this news would not change my day-to-day life much.  But later that night, as I worked on homework and graded papers that I had collected, I kept thinking about poor Sandra.  Her life was just starting, and now it was needlessly cut short.

I had a thought when I finished my work for the day.  Jed was still in the living room playing video games, so if I wanted a quiet moment to myself, now was my time.  I pulled the Plumdale High 1994 yearbook off of my bookshelf; I just kind of wanted to make sure I remembered what Sandra looked like, one last time.  Before I got to the page with her picture, though, I found something interesting in the beginning of the book that I had forgotten about: Sandra signed my yearbook that year.  

Greg,
You’re a really sweet & very funny guy that I got to know this year.  Hope you had fun in Spanish class. Good luck in the future. I know you’ll do great!  Just let everyone see the true & funny you.
Love, Sandra Soto

These words were still on my mind as I drifted off to sleep that night, thinking about death as this very unexpectedly atypical Thursday came to a close.  Sandra would now be forever remembered by her loved ones as she was in her early twenties.  She would never grow up and have a family of her own, but she also would never become bogged down by adulthood and the tedium of real life.  How would I be remembered?  Would I be anyone’s favorite teacher?  Would anyone discover all the stories and poems I had written over the years and get them published, leading to my posthumous renown as a literary genius?  Or would I just pass into obscurity and everyone would just get on with their lives?  Was my time coming soon, or would I live to old age?  Would the blood that Brianna and I gave today help someone else live longer?  If I did make it to old age, would I have a family of my own to remember me, or would I die alone?  I did not know.  But what I did know is that Sandra had believed in me.  She knew I would do great, and she encouraged me to show everyone my true self.  Maybe that was what I needed to do, to figure out who I really was, and to be unafraid to hide that.  Do it for Sandra.

Readers: Have you ever given blood? Tell me in the comments what it was like for you.

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[Fastball – The Way]

March 5, 1999.  Bowling with freshmen. (#210)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 2 Comments

“When my brother went here, he used to go see this band called Lawsuit,” the voice behind me said as I stood around after Jeromeville Christian Fellowship ended, looking for people to hang out with.  “I was listening to their CD in the dorm earlier with my door open, and this guy down the hall heard it and said, ‘What is this?  I’ve never heard anything like this, but it’s good!’  I don’t even know if Lawsuit is still together.”

This caught my attention.  I had not heard anyone speak the name Lawsuit in years.  Whoever this was, I had to give him the bad news that they broke up two years ago.  But if this person lived in a dorm, he was probably a freshman, not one I expected to be familiar with a defunct local band.  But he mentioned learning of them from an older brother.  I turned around, and suddenly it all made sense; the speaker was Brennan Channing, a freshman who indeed had two older siblings who had also attended the University of Jeromeville.  Christian, two years older than me, had been involved with JCF when I first started attending in my second year, and Haley, my age, had broken my heart the year after that.

“I hate to be the one to break the bad news, but Lawsuit broke up,” I said to Brennan.

“Oh, bummer,” he replied.  “You know them?”

“Yeah.  I saw them play the Spring Picnic my first two years here, then I saw them twice more after that.”

“Do you know why they broke up?”

“I don’t know the details.  But, wait.  You said you have a CD of theirs?  Which one?”

“The one with the pink cover.  Emergency something.”

“Emergency Third Rail Power Trip,” I said.  “Would you let me borrow that sometime?  I made a tape of someone else’s CD my freshman year, and now that I have a computer that can copy CDs, it would be nice to have it on CD.”

“Sure!  Are you coming bowling tonight?  I have my bike, I can go back to my room and get the CD and then give it to you at bowling.”

“I haven’t heard anything about bowling.  Am I invited?”

“Sure!  Jesse said to invite anyone.”

Many of the freshmen involved with JCF I did not know well, but I saw someone standing nearby wearing a name tag that said Jesse.  That was probably him.  None of my friends at JCF closer to my age had mentioned hanging out afterward, so apparently I was going to meet some younger students tonight.  “Sounds like fun,” I said.  “I’m in.”

“Jesse!” Brennan called out.  “Greg is coming!”

“Nice!” Jesse replied, turning to me.  “I’m Jesse.  I don’t think we’ve ever officially met.”

“I’m Greg.  Nice to meet you.”

“You’re a senior, right?”

“Actually, I graduated last year.  I’m in the student teaching program now.”

“Nice!  You’re gonna be a teacher?  What grade?”

“High school.  Math.”

“Math was always my favorite subject.  I’m a civil engineering major.”

“Nice,” I said.  “I don’t usually get people reacting positively when I say I studied math.”

“I get that.”

A total of eleven people ended up gathering to go bowling.  Brennan left on his bike to go get the Lawsuit CD for me, telling us that he would meet us there.  The only other student I knew in the group headed to the bowling alley was Lacey Kilpatrick, who came to the X-Files watch parties at the De Anza house sometimes.  She and Marlene, one of the other regulars at the X-Files parties, knew each other in high school.  As we walked toward the bowling alley, I repositioned myself within the group so that I was next to Lacey.  “Hey,” I said.

“Hi, Greg!” she replied.  “How was your day?”

“Not too bad.  The usual.  What about you?”

“I turned in a paper.  So I’m glad that’s over.”

“I get that.”

“Do you go bowling a lot?” Lacey asked.

“Not really a lot.  But sometimes.  I took the bowling class here sophomore year.”

“There’s a bowling class?”

“Yeah.  A half-unit PE class.”

“And you learn how to bowl?”

“Yeah.  By the end of the class, I was better than I was at the beginning, at least.”

“I’m not good at bowling,” Lacey said.   “But I have fun with it!”  My friends and I used to go bowling a lot in high school.”

“Having fun is what’s important.  I’m not really good at controlling the ball.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, for one thing, I learned in bowling class that you’re supposed to use a ball one-tenth your body weight.  That would be about 21 pounds for me.  They don’t make balls that heavy.  And even the heaviest 15- and 16-pound balls are really hard for me to control.”

“Can you try a smaller ball?”

“I remember toward the end of the bowling class, I went back to using a little bit smaller ball,” I said. “I probably will again tonight.”


The University of Jeromeville had a bowling alley on campus, an unusual feature for a university.  It was open to the public, being the only bowling alley in Jeromeville.  Even more unusual was the fact that it was underground.  A door in the Memorial Union building next to the campus store led to a wide stairway going down, ending in a large room called the Memorial Union Games Area.  In addition to sixteen lanes of bowling, the Games Area featured a couple of pool tables, as well as some coin-operated standing video games and two pinball machines.

After we paid, I walked over to the balls and looked for one that was not the heaviest one available.  I grabbed a 13-pound ball with finger holes drilled wide enough to fit my large hand.  We needed two lanes for a group our size, so when I got back to our lanes, I asked, “Which lane am I on?”

The Memorial Union Games Area still used paper score sheets, on which Lacey was currently writing everyone’s names.  “You’re on lane 8,” she said.  “With Stephen, Ngoc, Brennan, Emma, and Jesse.”

I noticed that Brennan had just arrived and was sitting in one of the seats for lane 8.  “Hey, Greg,” he said to me, handing me the Lawsuit CD.

“You found it,” I replied.  “Good.  I’ll give it back to you next week at JCF.  Does that work?”

“Sure!”

Many bowling alleys of that era used computerized score systems, but the MU Games Area still used paper score sheets, and most of the time when I came here, I kept score, because the people I was with just expected me to know how to keep score for bowling.  Apparently I just gave off that impression.  I did know how to keep score, but tonight I was relieved to see that Jesse was already sitting in the chair at the scorekeeper’s table.  That would give me one less thing to pay attention to, so I could concentrate on bowling, and being social when the opportunity arose.

Brennan got a spare on his first frame, and I was up after him.  I hit seven pins on my first roll, and two of the remaining three on the second roll.  I went to sit back down, a little disappointed in myself for not getting the spare, although nine was certainly not a bad first frame for me.  I bowled a strike on my second frame, eight on my third, and then two strikes in a row.  I pumped my fists into the air excitedly as I turned to sit back down.  Our group had two separate games going, but the players did not appear to be separating themselves; everyone sat on either side of the scorekeeping seat and ball return machine, regardless of which lane we were bowling on.  I sat in an open seat on the lane 7 side next to Lacey.

“Good job!” she said.  “Two strikes in a row!”

“Yeah.  And another one earlier in the game.  I’m doing better than usual.  And strikes score more when you get them back to back.”

“That’s right,” she replied.  “No strikes for me.  I got three on my last frame.”

“But are you having fun?  That’s what counts!”

“Yeah!  So what’s that CD you’re borrowing from Brennan?”

“A local band from Jeromeville who broke up a couple years ago, but Brennan knew them from when his brother went here.  I saw them four times.  I made a tape from my friend’s CD freshman year, but I have a CD player in my car now, and a computer that can burn CDs, so I’m going to copy Brennan’s CD.”

“Nice! What do they sound like?”

“Not like most other bands I’ve heard,” I explained.  “Like rock with horns.  I’ve heard them called ska, but they don’t really sound like other ska bands.”

“Interesting!  I’m up.  I’ll be right back.”  I watched as Lacey stood up, took her ball, and walked to lane 7.  The ball slowly rolled down the lane, headed to the right corner, knocking over one pin.  Lacey grinned at me sheepishly, and I smiled back, feeling kind of bad and hoping that she did better on her second roll.  I had seen Lacey around all year, at JCF, at church, and at the X-Files watch parties, but we had really only had a real conversation once before.

Lacey had better luck on her second roll, landing just off the center pin and knocking down seven more pins.  I clapped as she returned to the seat next to me, which was still open.  “Good job!” I said, putting my hand up to give her a high five.

“Thanks!” she replied enthusiastically.

“What’s your major?  Did I ever ask?”

“Psych, and I was going to do a Human Development minor.  But now I think I’m going to switch and have Human Development be my major.  I’m thinking of being a teacher too, but for younger kids.”

“That’s great!”

“Like probably second or third grade, ideally.  If I get my choice.”

“Yeah.  You don’t always get to pick what grade you want; it just depends on what’s open when they hire you,” I explained.  “But the longer you stay at a school, you can switch grades when something you want opens up.”

“That’s true.”

“Greg!” I heard Brennan call me from lane 8.  “Your turn!”

“Make it three in a row!” Lacey exclaimed.  I smiled as I walked to the other lane and picked up my ball.

I stood, holding the ball, looking at the pins down at the other end of the lane.  In bowling class, I learned to release the ball to the right of center and spin it just enough to hook back and hit the center pin at the angle.  But I always either put too much spin on the ball or not enough.  So tonight, as was usually the case, I had not been standing as far to the right as my bowling teacher had recommended, attempting to err on the side of not enough spin.  I hoped that those adjustments would cancel out and still lead the ball to hit the center pin just to the right, with enough spin to ricochet and hit all of the pins.  I straightened my arm in front of me, swung it back, and approached the lane, releasing the ball just as it came forward.  It rolled down the lane, slightly to the right of center, then began to curve back toward the center pin, the 13-pound ball moving faster than the 16-pound balls I had used the last few years usually did.  The ball hit the pins with a mighty crash; all ten pins flew upward and fell on the lane.  I turned around to loud cheering from everyone in my group.  All eyes were on me now; if they had not seen my roll, they would have heard the loud crash of the pins.  Three strikes in a row, or in bowling slang, a turkey.  Brennan high-fived me, as did Lacey, walking over from the other lane.  Someone else had taken the seat next to Lacey, so I sat in an open seat next to Brennan.

“Well done,” Brennan said.  “Three in a row.”

“Pretty sure we know who’s going to have the top score for this game,” Jesse said from the scorekeeper’s seat.

“I can’t remember the last time I had three strikes in a row,” I said.

“Do you know your best score of all time?” Brennan asked.

“Yes,” I said.  “When I took the bowling class here a few years ago, the best I ever did was 178.  I used to go bowling with my friends from high school sometimes, and one of them, Melissa, she told me that same year that she bowled 178.  For both of us, it was our best game ever.  So we went bowling the next time we saw each other, and you couldn’t have written the ending more perfectly.  We were both bowling great games, and she finished with 179, and I finished with 180.  So that’s still my highest score ever.”

“Really?” Brennan said.  “You both beat your personal bests, and you won by one?”

“I swear.  It really happened that way.”

Lacey, who was just returning to her seat after her turn, in which she hit a total of six pins, overheard the end of my story.  “Did you just say you’ve bowled 180 before?” she asked.

“I said that was my personal best, not by any means my average game,” I explained, “but yes.”

“Wow.  Are you beating that now, with those three strikes in a row?”

“It’s possible, if my game ends strong.”

“Well, good luck!”

Brennan got his ball and walked to the lane.  He hit nine pins on the first roll and completed the spare on his second.  “This is one of my best games ever too,” he said as I stepped up to find my ball.  “Two strikes and three spares.”  Brennan looked at the score sheet that Jesse was filling out as I waited for the pin setting machine to finish placing the pins.  Once this finished, I positioned myself just as I had before.  I tried the best I could to recreate what I had done the last three frames.  As I released my ball, I watched it roll down the lane in much the same trajectory as my previous ball.  Like the last one, it hit the lead pin at an angle with a loud crash, sending all ten pins tumbling.  I turned around, and Brennan and Lacey and all the others in our group cheered loudly.

“Whoa!” a guy on our lane named Stephen Giordano exclaimed.  “Did Greg just get another strike?  How many is that now?”

“Four in a row!” I shouted excitedly.  “Five total for the game.”

“That’s pretty impressive, man.”

“Thanks!”

I looked at the score sheet.  Since the score for a strike depended on the bowler’s next rolls, my score for this frame was uncertain, but a little quick math told me in my head that the lowest score I could get for this game was 125, and we were only in the seventh frame.  But by the ninth frame, my status of being the clear highest score on our lane was in question.  Brennan had bowled two strikes in a row following his spare in the seventh frame, and my streak of consecutive strikes had ended at four when I hit eight pins in the eighth frame and was unable to complete the spare.  I took a deep breath as I approached the lane with my ball, the pressure now on for sure.  I took another deep breath and sent the ball sailing down the lane, just as I had many times already tonight.  The ball hit the lead pin from the right, not quite as hard as some of my strikes before, but I breathed an excited sigh of relief as I watched all ten pins fall.  My sixth strike of the game overall.  I pumped my fist high.

But even this was not enough to be assured of the highest score on our lane.  Brennan bowled another strike in the tenth frame, positioning him for an exceptionally high score.  The strike in the tenth frame earned him two bonus rolls, which he did not bowl well, finishing with an excellent score of 175.  “My best score ever,” he said to the group, then turned to me and added, laughing, “Beat that.”

I looked at the score sheet.  Stephen Giordano finished with 122.  Ngoc, a thin Vietnamese girl whom I had seen around but never met before tonight, had a streak of luck at the end of the game, bowling strikes in the ninth and tenth frame, plus a third consecutive strike in her first bonus roll.  After a string of bad frames in the beginning of the game, this sudden outburst of strikes gave her a respectable final score of 99.  If I hit no more pins, my score would be 159.  I had a strike in the last frame, so essentially this roll and the next would count twice.  Eight pins would tie me with Brennan at 175.  A strike or spare would give me a chance to beat my all time best score of 180, depending on the bonus rolls.  Of course, all of this was just a friendly game, but the competitive side of me still felt intense pressure.  I went through my usual motion, released the ball, and got excited when I saw pins fall with a resounding crash, but the excitement dampened as I saw one pin in the left corner still standing.  I had beaten Brennan and was guaranteed the highest score of the six of us on this lane, but picking up this spare would give me 179, and I would then need only two pins on my bonus roll for my best game ever.

The approach I had tried for most of the game would not work here.  If the ball reached the pins where I had been aiming most of the game, it would sail past the empty space where these pins had already been knocked down, missing the one I needed to hit.  So I stepped to the left before my approach.  I watched in anticipation as the ball rolled down the lane, farther to the left than the last one.  It grazed the side of the one standing pin with just enough force to knock it over.  Everyone cheered.  I considered turning to the others and telling them that I needed two pins on the last roll to have my best score ever, but I decided not to.  Bragging about one’s own accomplishment during a sporting event felt like bad luck.  Two pins.  All I needed was two pins.  I took the ball back, but my hand slipped as I released it, sending it far to the left of center. The ball stayed out of the gutter and hit three pins on the left, giving me a final score of 182.

“Not my best roll,” I laughed as I walked back to my seat.  “But still my best total ever.”

“What’d you get?” Lacey asked excitedly.

“182.”

“That’s awesome,” Brennan said.  “We both had our best nights ever tonight.  I kind of wanted to save the scoresheet, but you earned it.”

“Thanks so much,” I replied.


We bowled a second game after that.  I scored 121, not nearly as good as my first game, but still fairly decent for me.  I brought the score sheet with me to campus Monday morning, went to the coin-operated copy machine in the library, and made a copy of the score sheet.  I gave it to Brennan the next time I saw him, at which time I also returned his Lawsuit CD.

To this day, that 182 game is still the best game I have ever bowled.  I taped that score sheet to my wall in my bedroom, where it hung for another two and a half years.  I do not bowl often these days; I probably average around 100 on the rare occasion once a year or so when I do go bowling, and I have not gotten anywhere close to 182 since then.

I wondered if I looked out of place being a twenty-two year old university graduate hanging out with a group of freshmen.  Lacey in particular I knew was even younger than most freshmen.  The address and phone list from 20/20, the young adult ministry at Jeromeville Covenant Church, also had birthdays on it, and Lacey’s birthday had caught my eye: “10/20/80.”  All multiples of ten.  Something about the rhythm of those numbers made my mathematical mind happy.  But if Lacey was born on October 20, 1980, that means that she would have still been seventeen when classes started in the fall, and she would have just turned eighteen a couple weeks earlier when I met her at X-Files in November.

I was probably overthinking this.  It just felt weird having friends born in the 1980s, now that many of my friends from my undergraduate years, who were born in 1975 and 1976, had graduated or would do so soon.  I had also had a bad experience recently with my unrequited crush on Sasha Travis, also a freshman born in 1980.  But Lacey and Brennan and Jesse and Stephen and the others did not seem to have a problem including me in their bowling night tonight.  Some of my friends had graduated, but I was still living in Jeromeville and taking classes, and now I was making new friends.

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