Recipes and Eccentric Ladies and Stuff....

This originally started out to be a post about my first attempt at making peanut butter granola balls, but then I got to thinking about how kind the lady was to post the recipe online for anyone to make them, and then it evolved into a post about Connie. Strange how that works.

Connie was a sweet lady with whom I taught English years ago. To say she was eccentric is putting it mildly. She was a little bitty thing with ginormous hair (I started working there in '89, and her hair never made it out of the 80's), and she teetered along on stiletto heels all the time. She was known to show up for school in a big old floppy hat -- we're talking Kentucky Derby quality here -- and it was worth going to prom every year just to see what Connie was wearing.

She's the only teacher I've ever known who got sent home to change clothes because they were inappropriate for school. That actually happened before my time, so I only know it as hearsay, but based on some of the outfits she DIDN'T get sent home for, it's very believable. She wore leggings even when they weren't in style, but she didn't necessarily wear the long cover-up tops that have cycled through the popularity phase a couple of times. Her tops didn't quite cover her rear, and they were likely to be low-cut on top of that, so it sometimes looked as if she were wearing a blousy bra and pantyhose. I know I'm not explaining this very well. She was middle-aged, so she should have known better, even if her body was still in good enough shape that she could carry it off.

Connie's classroom (in addition to her classes) was a disaster. There were stacks and piles and jumbles of papers, textbooks, workbooks, file folders, student work from the 60's (maybe), and just plain old JUNK strewn around her whole room. I'm no neat freak, but her classroom made me twitch. And her students just ran all over her. She babied them, even calling every single one of them "baby," and I'm sad to say she didn't do a whole lot of teaching. Her students made fun of her, but they weren't mean to her. They loved her because she loved them, and it wasn't their fault if she didn't teach them a blooming thing all year. But she was a wonderful person, generous and kind and funny and impossible not to like.

Right after I started teaching there, Connie brought in a coconut cake to school. I'm not a huge fan of coconut, but I AM a huge fan of cake, so I tried a piece. It was good enough to make me a die-hard coconut lover on the spot. I cannot describe the deliciousness of that cake. It was apparently her trademark, and everyone vied to get one of Connie's coconut cakes, even folks from other departments. When I (eventually) didn't have a mouthful of cake, I asked Connie if I could have the recipe.

She looked me dead in the eye and said, "No."

She didn't say anything else, and I stuttered and stammered for a moment. I kind of thought she was kidding for a moment, and I fully expected her to break into her tittering little laugh. Then she continued.

"If I started giving out the recipe, anyone could make it," she said. "Then it wouldn't be special anymore."

I couldn't argue with her logic. But I'd never had anyone REFUSE to give out a recipe before. I was stunned, to say the least.

Years later, when I got to know Connie better, I understood a little more fully. I didn't hold a grudge about the cake recipe, because it was just one of the eccentricities that made Connie Connie. Eventually she told me if I ever left that school, she would share the recipe with me. In that moment I knew I had become Connie's friend.

Of course I did eventually leave that school, and Connie didn't get around to sharing the recipe with me. It was probably buried somewhere beneath fourteen tons of paperwork in her classroom. I had other things on my mind as well, having just married Hubby and preparing to move on to another high school. I've taught in several places over the years, and that English department was the closest-knit group of co-workers I've ever had the privilege to work with. With the possible exception of my current co-workers, since there are only five of us.

Not too long after Hubby and I married, I was in the kitchen one morning and he was reading the paper. He called into the kitchen, "Do you know Connie ________?"

"Yeah," I said, "Why?"

"She drowned in her apartment swimming pool this weekend."

I was shocked, to say the least. She was only 54, and apparently she couldn't swim. I remember there being some speculation at the time that prescription drugs may have been involved, but her death was ruled an accident.

Now before you get all judgmental and start throwing accusations around that my first thought upon hearing of Connie's death was the fact that I would never get that coconut cake recipe, let me set the record straight and say that was my SECOND thought.

My first one was, "Holy mother of all that's holy, who is going to have to clean out her classroom?"

RIP, Connie.

Teaching Memories.....

As my teaching career winds down, I can't help but think back to some of my early memories related to my teaching career. Sweet Girl reminded me of some of them tonight related to her, so tonight's episode will be devoted to Sweet Girl and how her life intersected with my teaching career.

I don't know if I've ever told her or not, but it is BECAUSE of Sweet Girl that I went into teaching. I was working at a dead-end secretarial job under the supervision of a BEEYOTCH at the University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine. I was a good secretary and an excellent typist, but I couldn't help but feel my talents (and college education) were being wasted. Sweet Girl was born at the end of June, and I had planned my pregnancy down to the exact number of 30 sick days I would need to take 6 weeks of maternity leave. Taking any additional leave without pay was out of the question. What I did NOT anticipate was having a case of walking pneumonia early in my pregnancy, and I had to stay out of school for a week. That left me with only 5 weeks when Sweet Girl was born.

I promise there's a point to all this, and I'm not going to regale you with Sweet Girl's entire biography.

I decided to take 4 full weeks and then work mornings only for 2 weeks in order to ease back into the working routine. The two weeks I worked half-time I would pick her up from daycare (a four week old in daycare!!), and we would have the rest of the afternoon together. Toward the end of the second week I got emotional at the thought of leaving her all day every day. I remember thinking, "If only I had the whole summer off." I never thought I could be a stay-at-home mom (finances wouldn't have allowed it anyway), but the idea of having that three-month period together started the wheels turning and I decided to pursue a degree in education.

It wasn't easy, going back to graduate school with a little baby, and if it hadn't been for my mother, I couldn't have made it through the whole program. I was working toward my masters degree and my teaching certificate at the same time, and when it came time to student teach, I was assigned a school about an hour from home. Mom let me drop Sweet Girl off at her house, and she fed her breakfast and took her to daycare.

My first years of teaching were in a middle school, but I had despaired of getting a job and was happy to teach ANYWHERE. The first year I had trouble building up any sick days at all. I had a couple of minor illnesses (that was before I figured out that teachers go to work when they're sick unless they are throwing up or running a fever over 235), my brother was in a terrible car accident, and then Sweet Girl had the chicken pox.

When I moved on to the high school (thank all that is holy), I was given the top only if I would agree to tackle the yearbook. Welcome to high school, where we have ways of making you do things you would otherwise run like hell from. Anyone who knows anything about a high school yearbook knows that a large part of the work is done beyond the hours of the school day. There are workshops, advertising sales, sports events that have to be covered, and the dreaded deadlines. The woman who was in charge of the yearbook before me found herself spending the night at school with her staff when they were expecting delivery of the yearbooks and they didn't come by nightfall. So glad I didn't have to do THAT.

Poor Sweet Girl usually had to be dragged along to these after-school activities. I remember (and she reminded me of it tonight on the phone) one Saturday when we had an all-day work session. She was about 5 years old, and I was at a loss as to how to keep her occupied at school all day when I would be busy doing other things. I finally decided to allow her to take her roller skates (she was just learning) to school. She had the run of the entire building on her skates, and I'm so glad it was in the days before video cameras. She had a blast roller skating up and down the halls of that big building, and I didn't feel (quite as) guilty about making her spend her Saturday at school.

Whenever Sweet Girl got sick (it's always the middle of the night, too, isn't it?), I had to take her to school with me. Her pediatrician and my school were in the same town, about 30 minutes away from where we lived. It only made sense to take her to school with me, arrange lesson plans for a substitute, call the doctor's office when it opened, and take her to the doctor from there. Once the poor thing was so very, very sick that she lay down on the floor behind my desk and went to sleep. She was running a high fever, and I had to get some things together for the sub. We were still in my room when students began arriving, and she stirred restlessly. One of my students pointed at her and said, "Look! It's moving!" I lit into him like he had shot my dog, and I never ever liked him again after that. I know he was only teasing, but he was picking on my cub (sorry Sweet Girl), and I went into Mama Bear mode.

Sweet Girl remembers coming to my classroom and playing on the Mac. It was a tiny little computer with about a 7-inch screen, black and white, and those of us who had them were so dang proud of them. Naturally we didn't have a computer at home yet, so it was a special treat for her to get to play games on my computer.

I taught summer school a couple of years, because I could always use extra money in those days. (Wait...I still can always use extra money. "Extra" back then meant we might be able to buy groceries, though.) When Sweet Girl was in second grade, we were talking one day about what she might want to be when she grew up. I asked if she ever thought about being a teacher, and she said, "Maybe... But I'm never going to teach summer school." That broke my heart, and I never taught summer school again.

Sweet Girl went with me to Friday night football games and Saturday swim meets. I took her with me on the state Beta Club convention after she asked me one night, "Mom...What's a hotel?" The child had been to Italy, but she didn't know what a hotel was? She had a ball staying at one of the swanky Atlanta hotels, taking luxurious showers and wrapping her hair in a big fluffy towel. We went to eat at the revolving restaurant on the hotel's roof, and she loved the experience even if she didn't care much for the food.

She's gone with me to buy candy that I sold (illegally) out of my classroom cabinet to fund the school's literary magazine, she's helped me put together the student handbook and the literary magazine, she has helped me make copies and graded papers.

If she ever DOES decide to go into teaching, she's already had a lot of practice.

And I hope she doesn't ever teach summer school.