Miss O

I generally equate "high school" somewhere between auto-cannibalism and being eaten alive by fire ants. That's one of the reasons I left at 16--another year of that would have turned me into a tower killer.

But there were two good things about high school, and both of them were teachers. (Okay, my Latin teacher was pretty entertaining and we might be able to count him as #3. But that's another post.)

One was Mrs. C, my biology teacher. She had a Ph.D. (what she was doing teaching high school biology in the backwoods is beyond me), and more importantly, she knew how to engage students. While I could care less about biology, I had a great time in her class. She turned me onto all kinds of books I never would have considered on my own, including St-Exupery's The Little Prince and Stephen Hawking, and was one of the very few adults in my life at that time that didn't talk down to me or make me feel like a freak for being smart. She's not teaching anymore--last I heard, she'd dropped off the grid and was living in a cabin in the woods somewhere. Good for her.

The other was a teacher I never actually had as a teacher: Miss O'Hara.

My freshman year of high school was what you might politely call "awkward." Puberty hit my face hard and left the rest of me alone, so I was a tall, gangly, accident-prone stick with no figure, bad skin, bad hair, an unfashionable hand-me-down wardrobe, and Coke-bottle glasses. The only thing I had going for me was that I no longer had braces.

And because I grew up in a small town, I'd acquired the reputation of the school nerd in first grade and it had never gone away. If I'd blossomed overnight into Cindy Crawford, I still wouldn't have gotten a date.

So I had no real friends, no prospects for dating, and I was bullied and harassed constantly.

Fortunately, that was the year I discovered theater.

The summer before ninth grade, I got involved in the local community theater. The most controversial thing they ever put on was "South Pacific," but I didn't care. I fell in love hard with it all--the acting, the backstage stuff, the camaraderie, everything. When I started high school, I gravitated immediately to the drama club, which almost single-handedly saved me from contemplating suicide.

Miss O'Hara ran the drama club. She was young and brash and insouciant and for all those reasons was forced out the next year, despite being an excellent teacher. (This is why I don't live in small towns anymore.) She taught English; I wasn't in her class, but I wanted to be. My freshman-year English teacher was approximately 147 years old and insisted on calling me "Sandy" all year long because she couldn't remember my name.

Miss O was another one of those rare adults that didn't talk down to me or make me feel like a freak. Even better, the drama club was filled with people that never would have given me a second glance otherwise--popular seniors, a couple of cute jocks, several class clowns. In short, the cool kids. And we hung out all year long.

Well, the next year she was gone. But by then I'd somehow managed to acquire my first boyfriend (he was older and didn't go to my high school; thereby cementing a lifetime habit of dating older men), a couple of friends, and more importantly, the assurance that this town was not the entire world. That escape was possible. That one day I might not be an outcast.

So imagine my joy when Miss O'Hara floated back into my life several years ago. She lives in New York now and writes a fantastic blog about teaching.

This story didn't really have a point, except that I wanted to shill for her blog.

So go read it.

And if you've ever had a mentor/great teacher or two, write them an email and thank them.