A Homage to a Great Man

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Catalyst One Day event when it came to South Bend. Essentially, it featured a couple of famous pastors speaking about church strategy. The fantastic thing about things like this is that famous pastors are almost never famous by any real standard of fame,* although a number of people seem to mistake them for rock stars.

*As far as actually famous pastors go, I came up with this list: Joel Osteen, Rick Warren (maybe), Billy Graham, and then Jim Jones. So, it's really a toss-up about whether that's even a good thing to be.

Anyway, this post isn't about that, and it's certainly not a homage to Craig Groeschel or Andy Stanley.

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Every once in a while, a man gets to live the dream. A few weeks ago, I had that opportunity. Unfortunately, it was someone else's dream.

I was given a special task. I had to go to Krispy Kreme at like 6:45 in the morning to pick up the conference order - 47 boxes of glazed donuts. I wish you could understand the aroma that they left in my car for about a week-and-a-half. I'm serious. The air in the car had the caloric content of a half-gallon of whole milk.

And so I come to the Drawing Board today to pay tribute* to the man whose dream I lived, while he merely dreams of living. May you be so fortunate one day, my friend.

* Check the labels, dude.

--

I've always wondered* how a person might be perceived as he was ordering such a quantity of donuts. How would people look at me? What would they think? Would I be judged? Would I be revered?

*Not really.

But most of all, I wondered what exactly the cashier would say to me. Then she said it.

"Can I get you anything else today?"

47 dozen donuts? That ought to do it.

I wish I would have had the foresight to have asked for about four gallons of milk, 12 rolls of toilet paper, an hour-and-a-half in the corner, and an insulin enema.

Now, I Am REALLY Disillusioned

This is a post about the Chicago Cubs. You don't have to read it.

I grew up watching the Chicago Cubs on WGN. I grew up with Harry Caray and Steve Stone. Sometime after he stopped making sense to people, Harry died. WGN replaced him with his grandson - Chip Caray. So for the first 20 years of my life, there was one constant - Steve Stone would provide color commentary for Cubs games. No matter what happened, I could count on that. Except on Jewish holidays. Steve took Jewish holidays off.

Some things happened a few years ago, and now Mr. Stone is the radio announcer for the Chicago White Sox. I heard him today, encouraging people to join the official White Sox fan club.

I would have been less mortified if Big Bird told me to smoke crack.

More Shakespeare Please!

Mr. Tutorow was my AP English teacher when I was a senior in high school. He stands out as being the best teacher I ever had, the most challenging teacher I ever had, and far-and-away the most eccentric teacher anyone has ever had.

He's also the person who really inspired me to write, so all of the word-vomit that is this blog is essentially his fault. The world thanks you, Mr. Tutorow.

Tutorow wore exquisite suits every day. He was very Italian and he flew to Italy as often as he could. He bought all of his shoes from Italy. Also, he bought all of his olive oil from Italy. He was a superior wine snob. (Actually, I'm just guessing there, but it fits.) He was a nut for opera, preferring Placido Domingo to Pavarotti. I remember that. Now would be a good time to mention that I went to a typical inner-city school.

I can't possibly call the roll of all the literature we read my senior year except to say that it was expansive. Our summer reading list spanned three pages. I didn't finish it. No one did. (I fully expect at least one alum to respond to this post and say, "I did.")

Mr. Tutorow had a wife in Cuba.

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During my first winter break in college, Paul Klockow and I decided to go back and visit Mr. Tutorow. He was at a new high school - ours had closed due to an anemic 33% graduation rate.

The meeting was typical - we shared and reminisced. Then things went awry. Mr. Tutorow lost his keys. He stood up and shook a little bit. Sure enough, we could hear the keys, but when he reached in his pockets they were gone. This was a source of much consternation as our old teacher fidgeted and fished around in his pockets to find the keys. No dice.

Then, aha! He had torn a hole through the lining of his pocket. The keys fell through, but the chain had attached itself to some piece of fabric. Mr. Tutorow's hands were too big to get to the prize, and would Paul mind reaching into the pocket and fishing the keys out?

...

...

......................................................................

No. No, he would not. He would not do that thing.

And as far as we know, Mr. Tutorow is still sitting in the teacher's lounge of Washington High School, stranded there without his keys.

I Know What Biology Is and This Isn't It

There's one man who I remember more than most from my freshman year of high school. Mr. Bogucki taught Honors Biology. Also, he was kind of a weirdo.

Mr. Bogucki ate Taco Bell for lunch every single day, and he honestly believed that he was the pinnacle of human health because of it. On several occasions, he spoke of the virtues of the Taco Bell diet. Every 15-year-old in that room knew better.

That's not the only way he was eccentric. One time a kid asked to go to the bathroom. Mr. Bogucki allowed it, but only under the condition that the kid carry a fully stuffed and mounted moose head to the bathroom as his hall pass.

Fall asleep? Get slapped with a rolled-up magazine.

Protest that he shouldn't have hit you with the magazine? Get slapped again.

Take a swing at him because he just slapped you again with a magazine? He'd put you in a headlock and hold you until you stopped struggling.

(In fairness, that only happened once. But let's be honest, once is enough.)

Saved By the Bell

I was a fairly talented trumpet player during my high school days. That's not important, except to lead in to another crazy teacher story.

There was a guy named Mr. Gamble who taught me music from seventh through ninth grade. He was a decent trumpet player in his own right. He also had a truly fantastic temper. One time, he threw a music stand at a kid. He was never above yelling, and he often turned a bright shade of red. Imagine an early 90s Bob Knight directing a fairly poor middle school band, and there you are.

Not surprisingly, this fellow also had some issues with his blood pressure. He resigned as our band director after his doctor informed him that teaching music to poor musicians was going to kill him.

But my favorite Gamble story is this one. During the course of a very poor dress rehearsal in the school auditorium, something inside Mr. Gamble blew. The yelling was par for the course. The cursing was little more than average. His face reddened - again, that was normal. But there was more.

He began to stomp his feet, a strange way to emphasize count one of the measure. At some point during the stomping and carrying on, his foot landed precariously on the corner of the directors' platform. He fell backwards. He reached for a music stand - a music stand! - to hold himself up, but it was hopeless. He fell on his back and rolled a little bit. Then to our horror, and certainly his own - he fell six feet from the auditorium stage to the hard floor below.

It was like living in a Home Alone movie. He landed with a grunt, then all was silent. Some of us thought we'd just watched a man die. Our gaze turned toward the music stand that was falling in a sort of slow motion. It caught him right in the crotch. There was really nowhere else for it to go.

The ensuing, droning, utterly audible curse word assured us that this man was, in fact, still alive.

He clambered back onto the stage and addressed a collective of horrified teenagers, specifically the baritones, I believe:

"If you don't come in on count one, and that happens again - I'm not going to survive that twice."

Back to School

It's a shame I didn't keep a blog when I was in high school. I graduated from LaSalle High School in 2002, about two years before web logs became legitimate forms of communication. I met up with Mr. Paul Klockow last night and was quickly reminded of all of the stories from high school that need to be shared with the world. Namely, the story of Mr. Moyer.

Moyer was our government teacher, and he was a lame duck - he'd be retiring at year's end. One time a kid fell asleep in class at the end of the day, and Moyer wouldn't let anyone wake him. Poor kid finally woke up in an empty school three hours after the day had ended. That was Moyer.

We kept a running diary of virtually every session of class, and tracked how many consecutive days Moyer would say the word "jackass" during class. Every day for fourteen consecutive days. It was like being alive in DiMaggio's prime.

But the penultimate Moyer story is this one. During Christmas break of our freshman year of college, Paul and I decided to visit a few teachers. We went and saw Mr. Tutorow and Mr. Damien, but unfortunately, Mr. Moyer had retired. We decided to do some Christmas shopping, the whole time, lamenting that we couldn't see Moyer.

We walked into the University Park Mall, and who was the first person we saw? It was Mr. Moyer, sitting on a bench with his wife. He shook our hands with the intensity that makes your whole body shake until it's over. Then, this happened:

Moyer: Do you know what I do every morning now that I'm retired?
Me: No.
Moyer: I wake up, I drink my coffee, and then I sit on the porch, and give the finger to the school buses as they pass by.
Me: ...
Moyer's Wife: (Nodding sadly.)

And he was just one of the men who worked to shape my future.