It Worked -- I'm Here!

Man to pig and pig to man -- hard to tell which was which in the
Year of the animated animal farm in Jeeper's class.
Mine my mind, and I recall the face of Foster, the build of Bradley
Only to save my high school sophomore life.
Utterly it worked -- I'm here!

You have to love poetic license. While that excerpt from my book length poem nor long remember (ISBN 9781475103380) may not be the most memorable part of it, it refers to three teachers I had in tenth grade as well as a movie I watched in my world history class then, the animated version of Animal Farm, the George Orwell tale of animals overthrowing humans followed by the pigs becoming even worse to the other animals than humans ever were. "Jeeper" is my mushing together the initials of that teacher's name, in full John Patrick Edward Rutherford, with no disrespect intended -- he was one of my favorite teachers in high school. Ms. Foster was my Algebra II teacher and Mr. Bradley taught auto mechanics, to round this out.

Tenth grade came to mind this weekend as I was reading two library books I'd checked out last week, the Reginald Rose play Twelve Angry Men (with a needless introduction by David Mamet; ISBN 9780143104407) where twelve jurors in the late 1950s are attempting to discern whether a teenager killed his dad or whether there's reasonable doubt he did, and the Jason Quinn and Sachin Nagar graphic novel Gandhi: My Life Is My Message (the subtitle comes from what Gandhi said when the leader of the Peace Brigade in a newly independent India asked him for a message; ISBN 9789380741222), for in Mr. Rutherford's world history class we also watched the movie Gandhi with Ben Kingsley. Never quite forgotten my first introduction to the Mahatma.

(Which I'm sure if he heard me call him that -- Gandhi hated being called that, "Great Soul" -- would find some nonviolent way to oppose me.) This weekend also included our family receiving ANOTHER bicycle yesterday, for free from someone who didn't want to take it with him moving, from the same family friend we got bikes for Sarah and Jeffrey from last week. And while I was gone Sunday afternoon to see Pastor Gerald's entire slide presentation from his group's week building helping to build a house in El Salvador (got to remember El Salvador's the country, San Salvador's the capital), Martha and the kids rode to the school playground and back.

When I got home they were into the first twenty minutes of the animated movie Penguins of Madagascar and I got caught up pretty quickly into it! At church that morning we'd had a prayer partner activity where kids got to paint flower pots and then fill them with potting soil and plant seeds in it to take care of and watch grow. I also learned that next Sunday will be the last Sunday I have to teach Sunday school (specifically, the walk to Emmaus in Parable Playhouse) for this school year ... I trust the other teachers to do the story of Zacchaeus justice, I do. Besides, it didn't occur to me until, oh, middle of last week that I still needed to write the play.

We'll just miss adapting the Disney song, David