I arrived home around noon, after my student teaching assignment. It was not a good day. In the Basic Math B class, one student who was sitting there doing nothing had argued with me when I told him to get to work. Ms. Matthews, who I had discovered was not exactly the friendliest teacher in the world, had taken a somewhat scolding tone toward me about not getting into arguments with students.
I changed out of my work clothes, and turned on the computer. I answered emails, then I lay on my bed reading. A little after two o’clock, I heard a large vehicle of some sort stop outside the house. This was probably the moving van, I thought. I peeked out the window and, seeing a familiar boy with bushy blond hair get out of the moving van and walk toward the house, I got up to open the door. A middle-aged couple whom I did not know was with him; I assumed this must be his parents..
“Hey, Jed,” I said to him, opening the door. “Welcome.”
“Hi,” Jed’s father said to me, extending his hand. “Dave Wallace. You must be either Greg, Sean, or Brody.”
“Greg,” I said, shaking Mr. Wallace’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“I’m Sherri,” Jed’s mother added. “It’s nice to meet you too.”
“How was the drive?” I asked. “Must have been long.”
“We left Sand Hill at seven this morning,” Jed explained. “Stopped for lunch and gas in Ralstonville.”
“Yeah, that’s a long drive,” I replied.
“I think we should start with the bed,” Mr. Wallace said. “Can you help us carry it?”
“Sure,” I replied. “Sean is in the living room; he said to get him when it was time to help.”
After Sean introduced himself to Jed’s parents, we all walked back to the moving van. Sean and I pulled a twin size mattress out and awkwardly carried it toward the door. I walked in first, walking backward, and hit my head on the wall behind me. “Ow!” I cried out
“Move to your right,” Sean suggested.
“I can’t,” I said, pinned to the wall by the mattress. Sean continued trying to get the mattress through the door in a position that could be easily moved down the hall to the bedroom I would be sharing with Jed. I moved in the opposite direction, to my left, giving Sean room to get the mattress through the door, then we lifted it and pushed it down the hallway into the room. We stood out of the way as Jed’s parents brought in a box spring the same way. As Sean and I walked back out to the moving van, we passed Jed walking the other way with bed frame parts.
After helping Mr. Wallace carry in a large bookshelf, and bumping my body against the wall just as I had with the bed, I switched to carrying cardboard boxes small enough to be handled by one person. I went to get a drink of water after carrying about five boxes, and when I got back to the bedroom, Jed was looking through one of the boxes, pulling compact discs out and putting them on the bookshelf. The first two were music by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Squirrel Nut Zippers, contemporary swing bands that had capitalized on the recent revival of swing dancing.
“Do you know if they still have swing dancing at the U-Bar on Sundays?” Jed asked me.
“Yes!” I replied. “I’ve been going since the end of June.”
“Nice! How do you like it?”
“I’m not very good, but I’m having fun with it.”
“I went once with Ben Lawton last year. I found a place to dance back home and got really into it. It’s been fun.”
“That’s awesome.”
He then unpacked three CDs by the Celtic-Canadian folk musician Loreena McKennitt and asked me if I had ever heard her music. “I only know that one song that’s popular right now,” I explained.
“She has a song that’s popular?”
I was surprised that Jed did not know this; apparently he was a fan of hers before she was popular. “‘The Mummer’s Dance,’ or something like that. They play it on 100.3.”
“Oh,” Jed replied dismissively. “I don’t think that’s her best work.” I said nothing in return, since I was unfamiliar with Ms. McKennitt’s music. Jed changed the subject when he unpacked a large hardcover book, put it on the shelf, and said, “This is my prized possession.” I read the cover: it was J.R.R. Tolkien’s entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, all in one volume.
“Nice,” I replied. “I’ve actually never read that.”
“You’ve never read Lord of the Rings? We might need to fix that.”
“Maybe,” I replied.
“I read it twice a year. And I have another copy in paperback to lend to people, whenever you’re ready to read it.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“They’ve started working on a new Lord of the Rings movie series. It’s gonna be so good, but it’ll be a few years before it’s done. They haven’t even started shooting yet.”
“That’ll be fun.”
A couple hours later, Mr. Wallace told Sean and me that we were invited to go to dinner with them. “Jed said something about a Mexican place right around here that’s a little different from most other Mexican places, but he couldn’t remember what it was called.”
“Dos Amigos,” I said. “Santa Fe style Mexican food. I love that place.”
Dos Amigos was only a quarter mile away, so Jed, his parents, Sean, and I all walked there, down Acacia Drive, right on Maple Lane, and across Coventry Boulevard to a strip mall. “You’re not driving all the way back tonight, are you?” Sean asked.
“No,” Mrs. Wallace explained. “We got a room in downtown Jeromeville tonight, at the Colt Inn. We’re leaving in the morning.”
“We have another son who is old enough to stay by himself for a night,” Mr. Wallace explain. “Hopefully he won’t burn the house down.”
I could not tell if Mr. Wallace was being serious or sarcastic. “How old is he?” I asked.
“Fifteen.”
Probably sarcastic, I thought. Fifteen was old enough to stay alone overnight; at least that was the way most people saw the world in 1998.
After we ordered and sat at our table, Mr. Wallace said, “So, Greg. Jed tells me you’re in the teacher certification program at UJ, studying to be a math teacher.”
“Yes. I’m doing my student teaching in the mornings at Nueces High.”
“I’m a high school vice principal. When you’re done with the program, I might have a job for you if you want to move south.”
“Wow,” I said. “Thank you.” I had not considered moving across the state to Sand Hill, but I also did not want to rule anything out.
“What curriculum are they using in Nueces?”
“CRM. College Ready Mathematics.”
“That’s really popular up here, apparently.”
“Yes. One of my professors co-wrote it.”
“We tried that for a few years when it first came out,” Mr. Wallace explained. “Then we threw it in the trash where it belongs.” I nodded, not saying anything, as he continued. “It’s cheap, because the books are paperbacks; that’s how it got so popular.”
“I’ve heard Dr. Samuels speak about it,” I said, a little nervously considering how hostile Mr. Wallace had been to CRM. “It sounds like it’s meant to be implemented a certain way. My brother used it for one year, and from what I heard, his class wasn’t doing it right.”
“That’s because there is no right way to do it. You’ll see. And hopefully you’ll figure out what works for you and what doesn’t.”
“Yeah.”
“Sean? What did you say your major was?” Mr. Wallace asked. I relaxed a little as the conversation turned to another topic. I did not want to argue the pros and cons of the College Ready Mathematics curriculum with someone more experienced on the subject than me, especially given my personal connection to Dr. Samuels.
With Jed back in town, there would be one more familiar face at swing dancing every week, although he was a guy so I would not be dancing with him. The following Sunday night, three days after Jed moved in, he came with me to swing dancing at the University Bar & Grill. As we headed south on Andrews Road, Jed asked, “Are there a lot of people swing dancing this summer, with school being on break?”
“It’s a decent crowd size,” I replied. “There are still people around. But I didn’t start going until the beginning of summer, so I don’t know what the crowd was like during the school year.”
“That’s true. The place I went dancing back home had a pretty big crowd, but some of them came from farther away.”
“Yeah.”
“The first time I was there,” Jed said, “about midway through the night, this knockout blonde walks up to me, and asks me to dance. I was like, ‘Hello, nurse!’”
“Huh?” I said, confused. “Nurse?”
“‘Hello, nurse!’” Jed repeated. “Animaniacs?”
“I never got into that show,” I explained. “That was around the time I stopped watching kids’ cartoons.”
“Really? You never watched Animaniacs?” Jed sounded like he was having a hard time believing this, much as he had reacted a few days earlier when I told him of my unfamiliarity with Tolkien. I was used to getting that reaction when people talked about movies and television shows I had not seen. “That show was so good! ‘Hello, nurse!’ was what they said when they saw a pretty girl.”
“I see. I guess I just never took the time to get into it.”
“So anyway, this blonde girl walked up to me and asks me to dance. I asked her for her name, and she said, ‘Trouble.’”
“Her name was ‘Trouble?’”
“It was a nickname, but that’s what everyone calls her. She’s a really good dancer, though.”
Jed stopped talking about Trouble when we arrived. We each paid the cover charge and walked toward a nearby table where Erica Foster and Sasha Travis were sitting. “Hey, Greg,” Erica said.
“Do you two know Jed?” I asked. I looked back at Jed.
“I’ve seen you at church before,” Erica replied. “You two are roommates this year, right?”
“Yeah. Jed, this is Erica, and Sasha.”
“Nice to meet you!” Sasha exclaimed.
“You too,” Jed replied, shaking Sasha’s hand, and then Erica’s.
“Are Courtney and Cambria coming tonight?” I asked.
“No,” Erica said. “They’re packing for Outreach Camp, and they didn’t want to stay out too late.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“How come you’re not going this year? Don’t you usually go to that?”
“I have student teaching,” I explained, still a little disappointed that I would not be joining the rest of Jeromeville Christian Fellowship at their camp next week. “School at Nueces High already started three weeks ago.”
“Oh, that’s right. How’s that going?”
“I’m getting used to it. Mostly I’ve just been watching, and occasionally answering student questions. One of the master teachers is going to let me try teaching a lesson soon, though.”
“That’s exciting!”
“Do you go to J-Cov too?” Jed asked Sasha.
“Yeah. I’ve been going there all my life. I grew up in Jeromeville.”
“Nice!”
“My dad is on the elder board. And Erica and I have been best friends for a long time.”
“You want to dance?”
“Sure!”
Jed went onto the dance floor with Sasha, and I followed soon after with Erica. When the song was over, we came back to the table where Erica and Sasha had been sitting. A girl I did not know asked Jed to dance, and I just sat watching for the next song.
One of the quirks of this time of year in a university town like Jeromeville is gradually seeing people who went away for the summer reappear. About half an hour after we arrived, I noticed a familiar face walking by. She had straight brown hair halfway down her back, and glasses, and she wore a medium-length black dress.
“Candace,” I said as she walked by.
Candace turned around and looked at me, surprised to see me. “Oh, hey,” she said. “I didn’t know you danced.”
“I just started a couple months ago. Have you been doing this for a while?”
“I started in March or April, maybe? Before I went back home for the summer.”
“That’s cool.”
“Are you coming back to chorus this year?”
“Probably not. My schedule is pretty much set for the whole year, in the student teaching program.”
“That’s right. You graduated last year. So that’s what you’re doing now? Getting your teaching certificate? What are you teaching?”
“I’m teaching math, at Nueces High.”
“That’s cool!” Candace said. “Good luck with that!”
Jed walked up at that moment, and I asked him, “Do you know Candace? I know her from when I was in chorus.”
“I’m Jed,” he said, extending his hand to shake hers. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Candace replied.
“Jed is my roommate for this year,” I explained.
“Oh, okay.”
“Would you like to dance?” Jed asked Candace.
“Sure,” she replied.
“Save me a dance later?” I asked Candace.
“Of course!”
While Jed and Candace were dancing, I went to the bar to order a Roy Rogers. After I got my drink, I saw Bethany Bradshaw walk in with a group of people presumably from University Life, the student-age group at her church. Bethany was one of the first friends I made from dancing, and I knew a few others in her group, so I walked over to talk to them. “Hey, Greg,” Bethany said, giving me a hug from the side.
“Hi,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. What have you been up to?”
“The usual. Jed moved in a few days ago.”
“That’s right. Jed is your roommate this year.”
Ben Lawton, one of the other U-Life people I knew, overheard us and turn around, asking, “Jed? Jed Wallace? Is he here tonight?”
“Yes. I drove him here.”
Ben scanned the room, saw Jed dancing, and said, “I need to go say hi to that guy once he’s done dancing. He came with us once last year. I didn’t know he was still dancing.”
“He told me he got really into it back home over the summer.”
“Good for him. I always told him he would like it.”
When a new song began, I asked Bethany if she wanted to dance. She said yes; I put my drink on a table near the U-Life group and led Bethany to the dance floor. After the song, she told me that she thought I was getting better; I was not sure what she saw in my dancing that had improved, but it was nice to get a compliment.
It was a good night overall. I got brave and asked a total of four girls I didn’t know to dance, and two of them actually said yes. Jed and I stayed until the last song that night. As more people came back to Jeromeville for the summer, I was hoping that more people I knew would come dancing regularly. That would be nice.
Living with Jed would be interesting this year. He was definitely not a typical university student. He marched to his own beat. I never did become familiar with any other works of Loreena McKennitt, other than that one song. And I never accepted Jed’s offer of borrowing his Lord of the Rings paperbacks, although I did read the trilogy a few years later, when the first of the movies was finally being released and heavily hyped.
Jed was eccentric, in a good way. People like that either find people willing to accept their differences and live very happy lives, or they are rejected by people in the mainstream who are unwilling to accept someone who is different. I have always felt different, and I have experienced both kinds of reactions from society around me at different times in my life. Looking back, I do not know if Jed had experienced as much difficulty as I have at times in finding people who accept him, but regardless, tonight ended up being a major positive milestone for him, because I had just unknowingly introduced Jed to his future spouse. But that is a story for another time.
Readers: Do you have any friends who are eccentric, quirky, or unusual, but in a positive way? Tell me about them in the comments!
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