Posts Tagged ‘mother’
While I was up in Sacramento for the state fair and to see a very special Weird Al show, I had the pleasure of seeing one of my uncles on my mother’s side. Truth be told, the trip to Sacramento, the admission to the fair and the ticket for the very special Weird Al show were all at his expense, right down to the gas money.
I was more grateful than I could think to express. Thank you just didn’t seem to cover it, and I decided to get in as many as I could while there.
As if all that weren’t enough, he gave me all the leftover foodstuffs he and my aunt decided they didn’t want, anymore. Besides tomato juice older than some fifth graders I know — this stuff never goes bad, he said — and enough tuna to make nightly casseroles through a week of Sundays, he gave me several varieties of coffee and tea, two Bankers boxes filled with soda, and almost 4 pounds of beef jerky of various varieties. Among many, many other things.
One of these things, in particular, was not foodstuffs, napkins or microwavable bowls at all — it was one of them newfangled GPS systems. Shock, awe and thankfulness, all over again.
He had one lying around and, because I’m now gainfully employed as a school photographer, he thought I could use it. I could, I can and I have.
In — four hundred — yards. Turn — right. Then — stay in the — left — lane.
Wouldn’t it be great if these handy little time-saving gadgets didn’t pretend their English was anything but broken?
I didn’t get it at first. What could he mean by asking:
Does your mother have a black dress?
No other credential program professor would tell this story. No other credential program professor would have this story. But because he’s Dr. Rosy, he’d tell us how he as a school teacher once dealt with a school bully.
This had to have happened in the mid-90s, in the first few weeks he taught 8th grade English in a high school somewhere in the Midwest.
The way he tells it, he came across an all-state athlete picking on some scrawny kid whose feet weren’t touching the ground. The lineman had the kid up by the collar.
Dr. Rosy — then Mr. Rosy, doctoral student — walked up to the bully and told him to put the kid down. The bully complied immediately. This kid must have been pushing iron since the 3rd grade, recalled Rosy.
This athlete was 6 feet 5 inches, with a solid 300 pounds of muscle, and now focused his attention on the upstart teacher.
A girl off to the side of the scene told the football player to just take care of Rosy already. Rosy wasn’t impressed; he asked the girl for her cell phone. She declined.
In that case, you call 911 and get an ambulance here. Well, maybe two. This guy’s so big he won’t fit in one.
Rosy was at least 43 years old and slightly shorter than the bully. A large-framed man even then, he would have been quite a bit smaller than the massive boy defiantly facing him, as if to challenge the teacher’s authority with a show of muscle.
Rosy, unimpressed, asked the kid a question.
Does your mother have a black dress?
The bully didn’t understand, so Rosy repeated the question.
Does your mother have a black dress?
Rosy must have feigned pondering to himself for a moment. Knowing him, for dramatic effect.
Because she’ll need one in about four days. That’s about when the state buries you.
That’s about when the story ends with my class laughing hysterically, some laughing out of horror.
He never advocated using or threatening violence, of course, and made sure to say that.
You have to improvise, overcome and adapt to these situations.
That’s one way to look at it.
These impromptu anecdotes were the best part of my credential program. The most entertaining, the most useful, the most helpful, the most consoling. I always felt like I learned something from every one of his classes.
