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]