Today, Stepson had a soccer game. Last year, I managed to avoid going to many of the games because Pumpkin was so young, and I was still nursing, and I didn’t want to have to deal with having to breastfeed her in front of a bunch of elementary school soccer players and their parents (I never did get comfortable with that whole nursing in public thing). Today was the first game Hubby and I had attended in quite some time – and it was brutal. Stepson’s team lost, 7-1. And they deserved the loss, as most of the team seemed afraid of the ball. The coach continually cried, “GREEN TEAM! SPREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAD OUT!” and “GREEN TEAM! COVER THE FIELD!” to no avail. Instead, the boys clustered around the ball (which the other team maintained control of for most of the game) and then never dared tried to kick it.
As I was standing there watching the massacre, The Princess slurping on a juice box, Pumpkin toddling all over, I saw my former high school math teachers. Her son happened to be on Stepson’s team.
She was, in this previous life, my trigonometry teacher, pre-calculus teacher, my advisor for AP Calculus (Which didn’t go well, by the way), and my cheerleading coach. Having spent several years in her classroom, she was one of my favorite teachers. Of course, I’m not a math purist. Hubby and one of his friends still laugh when they remember back then, how she was a terrible math teacher. Maybe I wasn’t a fantastic math student – or my standards were not the same as theirs, because I really liked her.
Though it’s been twelve years since I’ve been in her classroom, she still remembered to ask after my mother, and my brother, and how life has been and how am I. In fact, when she saw me, she didn’t even struggle to conjure my name – she immediately smiled, “Hi Sarah!”
I know, it’s goofy to think that chatting with a former teacher would be a bright spot in the day, but it was. And no, I never became a math star or anything even remotely close to it (I ended up with a B in Calculus I in college, and then proceeded to bomb Calc II miserably), so I wouldn’t say I am smarter or that she inspired me to write theorems or be all “sine this” and “cosine that”. But she was a neat lady, and it was a fun few minutes.
It’s odd to see the people who were once authority figures now – the field is leveled somewhat. Instead, we were just two parents at a kid’s soccer game. I’ll probably see her at Stepson’s games for the rest of the season. When you think of how many students have passed through her classroom over the past decade plus, that she remembered me was a bit of a boost in an otherwise ugly morning.
About sarah
Speak Your Mind