From the moment I decided to pursue education as a career, I knew that what I was about to do now, for the first time, was going to be one of my least favorite parts of this career. My student teaching assignment at Nueces High consisted of two classes, one first period and one third period, so I had plenty of time during second period to get this done.
I walked to the front office and asked Teri, the secretary, “Where can I find parent phone numbers?”
“I can look it up for you. Who is the student?”
“Emily Wallace,” I said.
Teri typed into her computer, then wrote the name of Emily’s mother, and her home and work phone numbers, on a sticky note. “Hopefully, a couple years from now, there will be a computer on every teacher desk, so you can look this up yourself..”
“That’ll be nice.”
“Remember to dial 9 to get an outside line,” Teri said.
I took the paper and walked back to the teacher lounge, which had a telephone in it. The room was empty, which was unusual. Many teachers at Nueces High did not have an empty classroom during their prep period, with other classes in their rooms then, so some of them were typically in here working. I was glad for an empty room, though; I did not want people eavesdropping on my call. I walked over to the phone and nervously dialed 9, then Mrs. Wallace’s home phone number. As the phone rang, I thought about how my roommate also had the last name Wallace. I was pretty sure he was not related to these Wallaces, though; he knew I was student teaching at Nueces High and probably would have told me if he had a cousin attending there.
“Hi! You’ve reached the Wallaces,” a recorded voice said after four rings. “Please leave a message at the beep.”
“Hi,” I said, a little nervously. “This is Mr. Dennison. I’m a student teacher in Emily’s math class. I had to send her out on a class suspension today, because she was refusing to work, and she made inappropriate comments when I told her to get to work. Please call the school and leave a message for me. Thank you.”
I had fulfilled my legal requirement for a class suspension. Emily had spent the rest of the period in Room Two, the classroom reserved for such situations, and state Education Code said that a teacher had to contact the students’ parents as soon as possible after sending the student out of class. But I had had so much trouble with Emily in class lately that I wanted to speak in real time about the situation, so even though I hated making these phone calls, I dialed Mrs. Wallace’s work phone number next. She picked up on the third ring.
“Mrs. Wallace?” I asked, hoping that it was in fact her and that I would not have to explain myself.
“Yes,” Mrs. Wallace replied. “May I ask who is speaking?”
“This is Mr. Dennison. I’m a student teacher in Emily’s math class.”
“Hi! I remember you from Back-to-School Night. What did Emily do this time?”
“She was just sitting there doodling instead of doing her work. I asked her to get back to work, and she ignored me. I asked her again five minutes later, and she shouted at me that I wasn’t a real teacher and she didn’t have to do what I said. So I sent her to Room Two for the rest of the period.”
“Wow. I’m sorry she acted that way. But thank you so much for contacting me. I will have a talk with her, and you will see a new attitude from her on Monday. Just because you’re still studying to be a teacher, you’re an adult, and it’s still your classroom.”
“Thank you so much.”
“Please let me know again if you have any issues with her. Do you have email?”
“I do,” I replied. Email was a new enough technology in 1998 that teachers were not automatically given email accounts from the school district, but since my student teaching assignment was technically a class through the University of Jeromeville, I could use the same UJ email that I used for everything else to contact Mrs. Wallace. Also, the thought of having more than one email address and separating home and work emails had not yet occurred to me at this point in the history of the Internet. Mrs. Wallace gave me her email address, and I wrote it on the sticky note with her phone number. “Thank you so much,” I said. “Have a good weekend.”
“You too!”
The rest of the day felt peaceful, knowing that I had survived my first parent phone call as a teacher. I had no classes on Friday afternoon, but next week I had a final exam and a paper due. I worked a little bit on outlining the paper, then took a nap and spent the evening at the last Jeromeville Christian Fellowship large group meeting of 1998.
Saturday I got some more studying done. I had plans in the evening. Bethany Bradshaw, my friend whom I had met over the summer swing dancing, had a friend from freshman year who was currently in a community theater production of Fiddler on the Roof, and she had invited me to the show with her. I was not a theater guy, and I knew almost nothing about this show. But I had no plans, and ever since Bethany got busy with school and cut back on swing dancing and I quit altogether after a bad experience, I had not gotten to hang out with her as often, so I said sure. I drove to her apartment and knocked on the door; she answered, wearing a dress. I hoped that I would not appear underdressed for a community theater production in the collared shirt and business-casual pants that I wore.
“You ready?” I asked.
“Yes!” Bethany replied. “Let’s go!”
Bethany followed me to my car. I pulled away from the curb, turned left on Maple Drive, and then turned left on Coventry Boulevard, headed east. “How’s studying for finals going?” I asked.
“It’s going. I think I’ll be okay. How’s student teaching?”
“It’s okay. One girl told me yesterday that I wasn’t a real teacher, and she didn’t have to do what I told her. I called her mom yesterday, my first parent phone call as a teacher.”
“Wow. How’d that go?”
“Really well, actually. The mom seemed supportive.”
“That’s good! Do you have finals next week too?”
“I do, for my two education classes, one actual final and one paper due. That’s what I’ll be working on the rest of the weekend. But I’m still student teaching next week.”
“What about the kids you’re teaching? Are they taking finals? Do you have to grade them?”
“Not yet. Their finals are the third week of January.”
I could see out of the corner of my eye that Bethany was making a weird face. “Really?” she asked. “Why?”
I did not understand the context of her question. “Because that’s when high school semester finals are. At the end of second quarter.”
“In January?”
“Yeah. School starts at the end of August and gets out at the start of June, so the middle of January is the halfway point of the year.”
“That’s weird.”
“Your finals weren’t like that?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. I don’t really remember. You took finals in the middle of January in high school?”
“Yeah. Because then the two semesters are the same length, so classes that only go for half the year are the same in the fall and the spring.”
“Weird,” Bethany said.
It was just as weird to me that Bethany took finals before winter break in high school, but I dropped the subject, not wanting to argue. As high school passed farther and farther into the past, I had come to notice that many people remembered little to nothing about the details of their academic experiences in high school. I had had many conversations with people who had forgotten their schedules, or what classes they took in what years, or fundamentally important subject matter. I had come to realize that I was the unusual one, in that I remembered so many details of my own high school experience. This may have been because I had written about the experience extensively when I was less than a year removed from it.
As we approached downtown headed south on G Street, I asked, “The Valley Theatre is on Second Street, between F and G? Is that right?”
“I think so.”
I parked in the parking garage around the corner from the Valley Theatre and walked inside with Bethany. The building was about half full when we arrived, because we got there fifteen minutes early. I had learned somewhere that it was considered poor etiquette to arrive late to a live stage performance, and that some theaters closed their doors after the show started. Jeromeville seemed like the kind of place with snooty people who would enforce this rule, so I made sure to get there in plenty of time.
We each started looking through the program when we got to out seats. “How do you say this name?” Bethany asked, pointing to “Tevye,” the name of the main character. “Do you know?”
“‘Tev-yuh,’ I think. I’ve heard that name before, actually. Funny story. When I was a kid, we had a lot of cats, and other cats from the neighborhood would sometimes come play with our cats. Once we had a neighbor with a cat named Trevor, and in our family, cats always get called silly nicknames, and my dad would sometimes call Trevor ‘Tevye’ because it kind of sounds the same.”
“That’s funny. People always make up weird nicknames for cats.”
“I know! Which one is your friend?”
“Nicole,” she answered, pointing to a name in the program. “She plays Chava.”
The lights darkened, and the actor playing Tevye walked out on stage, singing a song where he kept shouting the word “tradition,” and explaining the traditions of his people. I gathered from the context that Tevye and his family were Russian Jews, and that this show was set sometime in the past. As the show went on, Tevye found his simple, traditional life challenged as his daughters grew up. One of them wanted to marry a man she loved instead of going through a traditional matchmaker, another became romantically involved with a revolutionary, and the one played by Nicole had a non-Jewish love interest. Just before intermission, at the wedding of the eldest daughter and the man she loved, some characters in the show started a violent riot.
“What happened there at the end?” I asked after the lights came up.
“The Russians persecuted the Jews back then,” Bethany explained.
“I figured that, but I meant like was this part of an actual specific historical event, or a war?”
“I’m not really sure exactly. I think it’s just supposed to be typical of the time period.”
“That makes sense,” I replied, nodding. During the show I had remembered something that Bethany had once said that I wanted to ask about, so I asked, “Don’t you have a birthday coming up?”
“Yeah!”
I did not remember which day, so I said, “14th? 15th?”
Bethany looked at me, rolled her eyes, and said “21st.” I was confused. I did not remember the exact day, but I knew it was a number in the teens. She definitely did not say December 21. I figured out what the confusion was when she continued, “Really? Do I look so young that you have to joke about it?”
“Oh!” I replied, chuckling. “I meant what’s the date. The 14th or 15th, I can’t remember. I didn’t mean your age. I know how old you are”
“Wow,” she laughed. “It’s the 15th. Tuesday. And I have a final on my birthday.”
“Happy birthday! Here’s a huge test. Do you have any plans other than that?”
“My roommates are taking me out that night. I don’t have another final until Thursday afternoon, and that’ll be an easy one, so we can stay out late Tuesday night. And I’m flying home Friday, so I’ll have a birthday dinner with my family on Friday.”
“Do you need a ride to the airport? I should be home from student teaching by noon.”
“My roommate is going to take me, but thanks for asking.”
The show resumed after intermission, with the political changes in early 20th century Russia and the continued persecution of Jews disrupting Tevye’s peaceful rural life. Tevye’s revolutionary son-in-law was arrested and exiled for his political activities, and Tevye did not accept the marriage of Chava, Nicole’s character, to a man who was not a Jew. In the end, with the Russians preparing to force Jews from their land, Tevye’s entire family left their village behind to start new lives elsewhere.
After the curtain call and many rounds of applause, I turned to Bethany and said, “That was really good. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“It was. Sad ending.”
“Yeah. Being forced to leave your home like that. I guess that just kind of hit home for me, since I’ve been thinking about next year. This might be my last year in Jeromeville, if I end up getting a job somewhere too far to commute from here.”
“Oh, yeah. That must be hard, not knowing. Do you know where you’re going to apply for jobs?”
“Definitely as many school districts near Jeromeville as I can. I already have a community and a church here, and I have a lot of younger friends who are still going to be around a couple more years. But I’m probably just going to apply to a lot of different places. I’m not planning on moving too far away, though. I like this part of the state.”
“Are you thinking about moving back home to Plumdale? Or anywhere around Santa Lucia?”
“Definitely not. Too gray most of the year, and not warm enough in summer. And I need to be out on my own, not too close to my family.”
“That makes sense. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah.”
“Nicole just came out from backstage,” Bethany said, pointing to Nicole, still in her Chava costume and now standing just in front of the stage. “Let’s go say hi to her.”
I followed Bethany to where Nicole was standing. As she saw us approaching, her eyes lit up, and she reached her arms out and gave Bethany a big hug. “Bethany! You made it!”
“It’s good to see you! You did well!”
“Thanks! It’s been so much fun rehearsing and everything! This is a really great cast! It’s been a lot, though, especially with finals coming up too. But mine aren’t going to be too bad this year.”
“This is my friend Greg,” Bethany said, gesturing toward me. “Greg, this is Nicole.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking Nicole’s hand.
“How do you guys know each other?” Nicole asked.
“Swing dancing,” Bethany answered.
“You swing dance, Greg?” Nicole asked me.
“Well, not anymore. All my friends who got me into it last summer stopped going once school started, and I kind of had a bad experience with the people who were still going. I haven’t been in over a month, but maybe I’ll try it again someday.”
“It sounds like fun!” Nicole said. “I know some people who do that sometimes.”
I stood there trying not to seem too awkward as Bethany and Nicole caught up on news of people they knew two years ago in their freshman dorm. I did not know any of those people. After a few minutes, Nicole said goodbye to us and moved on to talk to other people she knew who had been in attendance tonight.
“You ready to go?” Bethany asked.
“I think so,” I replied.
We walked back to the parking garage. I drove to G Street, then headed north toward Coventry Boulevard. “You’re quiet tonight,” Bethany remarked about halfway through the drive home.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Sorry.”
“Everything okay?”
“Just thinking about all the stuff I was talking about. Next year. And the future.”
“Yeah. It’ll be okay. God has a plan for you.”
“I know.”
“I’ll pray for you.”
“Thanks.”
We arrived in front of Bethany’s apartment; I parked in a spot that was probably reserved for someone else, but I was only going to be there for a minute. As I walked her to the front door, she said, “Thanks for coming with me tonight!”
“Thanks for asking me,” I replied.
“Good luck with finals.” She gave me a hug.
“You too,” I said. “And happy early 15th birthday.”
“Shut up,” she replied, laughing and playfully slapping my arm.
All of this was still on my mind as I attempted to drift off to sleep in my bed that night. My time as a University of Jeromeville student was rapidly coming to an end, and depending on where I found a job, my time as a Jeromeville resident might be coming to an end too. I already had my degree, and in just six months I would have a teaching certificate. It would be nice if I could find a job at Nueces High, or somewhere else within commuting distance of Jeromeville; I could continue going to Jeromeville Covenant Church, and watching The X-Files at the De Anza house. But this was certainly not guaranteed.
The world around me was changing also. The year was coming to a close. Soon it would be 1999, and soon after that the year 2000 would arrive. People were going to have to get used to start writing a 2 at the beginning of the year, and hoping that their computers would be able to handle dates that begin with 2 without crashing. In my childhood, the year 2000 was often used as symbolic for some far-flung future, but now, the future was almost here.
I had known little about Fiddler on the Roof before tonight, but Tevye’s plight in the Russia of almost a century ago felt strangely relatable. His people had lived according to centuries of tradition, but his daughters were finding husbands in nontraditional ways, and the society around him had become hostile to his people to the point that he had to flee the only home he had ever known. Even though Jeromeville had become home to me, and the thought of leaving soon made me sad, the truth was that a politically liberal university town may not be the most accommodating place for my traditional Christian values.
Even in the face of a changing world and changing traditions, some things were worth holding on to. I had a community of other Christians here in Jeromeville, and if I ended up somewhere else, the first thing I would do would be to find a church. God’s Word was timeless and unchanging, and this would always give me something to look to for guidance and comfort. And another long-standing tradition was born that night. Bethany and I have stayed in touch, and I kept that joke about her 15th birthday going for a long time. I gave her a Sweet Sixteen card the following year when she turned twenty-two, and when she turned twenty-four, after she had moved back home to southern California, I sent her an email asking how it felt to finally turn eighteen and be an adult. Bethany and her family now live in Missouri, halfway across the United States from me, and I made reference to the old birthday joke as recently as 2023, when she turned forty-six, by posting a picture of a cake that said “Happy 40th Birthday” on her Facebook wall. Old inside jokes are the best.
How have changing traditions affected your life? And do you have any long-standing inside jokes with friends? Tell me about it in the comments.
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