It took decades, but I finally got to know my high school math teacher.
Math and I do not get a long! Maybe because my Dad had been an accountant early on in his career and he thought everyone should just enjoy the heck out of numbers and couldn't understand why mathematical concepts were so hard for me to grasp. Or maybe it's because I'm just not wired that way.
The only two math classes I took in high school were Intro To Algebra. Part I and Part II. It took two years to basically get through one math class. I guess I passed, since I earned my diploma, but math was certainly not my favorite class, and actually was the class that I 'cut' the most, second only to P.E. Just so you know, cutting classes was way too easy at the high school I went to. It was almost a game to see how many classes you could cut and still be considered enrolled in school.
My teacher for both of my math classes was a man who I viewed as very organized, very focused and very stern, and basically he scared me. As soon as I left high school, I didn't see my math teacher again.
Sharing a passion
Until... I was walking through the children's hospital where I volunteer and I ran into a familiar face... my high school math teacher! He was with his wife, who also was a teacher and had also worked at my high school. I introduced myself to both of them and in return I was treated to two huge, beaming smiles! They were so glad that I had stopped them on their way to the gift shop where they spent at least one day a week, happily helping customers who were either in or visiting someone who was a patient in the hospital at a trying time in their lives. What nice people! And what a wonderful revelation to find that we shared a passion for volunteering at the children's hospital.
I regularly saw both of them over the next couple of years as we were all three on our paths to help out at the hospital. My volunteer assignment had me stationed at a building across the street from the hospital, and I didn't always come in on regular days, so I didn't see them all the time. But when I did, their smiles were just as big as the first time I ran into them.
The year before the pandemic, I decided to finally go to the Volunteer Appreciation Event since this was the year that I had earned my 15 year pin. I was elated to see them there and I was so happy to be able to spend an extended amount of time with Mr. Dunaway and his wife, Louise.
A decades long discovery
I recently found out that Mr. Dunaway had passed away. Due to the pandemic, volunteering was shut down for quite a while and I don't know if the Dunaways went back. I haven't been back and not sure if I ever will or not.
But the fact that I had been able to connect with my former math teacher was, and continues to be, a real joy in my life. How funny that I had been able to experience Mr. Dunaway when I was a teenager and he was in his early thirties, when those years we had between us made for such a gap, due to those differences in our years.
How very funny that so many years later we had come to the point where that age gap from my high school years, somehow, mysteriously, shrunk, as we came to know each other as colleagues with similar interests and passions, in place of our roles as teacher and student. I still don't like math, but I sure do like my math teacher. Even if it took me decades to discover that.
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