Mr.
Haberbosch was my tenth grade biology teacher, and also our football
coach at Jefferson High School.
I
remember he said that he had played football at Kansas State.
He
had a perpetual smile between rosy cheeks.
He
never lost his temper.
He
didn't do that much teaching.
He
was just there.
In
the classroom.
A
calm presence.
I
liked biology a lot, and so it was no problem that Mr. Haberbosch was
on the low end of instruction.
I
liked it that way.
I carefully memorized the textbook.
(Many
teachers tend to speak just to listen to themselves.
Like
politicians.)
I
thought about Mr. Haberbosch as I was watching Oklahoma play Kansas
State.
It's
October.
Football
season.
But
I'll soon change the channel to watch game seven between the Houston
Astros and the New York Yankees.
I
want the Yankees to win so that they and the Dodgers can slug it out
in the 2017 World Series.
In Mr. Haberbosch's class it was always me who would ask him to tell us about the time that Billy stole a watermelon from Mr. Wilson's
watermelon patch.
Mr.
Haberbosch smiled even harder after I asked him to repeat this story.
I asked him every two weeks.
I
never got tired of hearing him tell it.
I
got a B in his class.
The
next year I was in Dr. Kirschner's Biology II Honors class.
That's
when Mary Ann Meyers and I dissected a fetal pig.
The
formaldehyde was tolerable just so that I could sit next to Mary Ann Meyers.
Later
in the year we went to the Junior Prom.
I
got an A in Honors Biology.
Oklahoma
just scored a touchdown in the last seven seconds to break the 35 to 35
tie and win the game.
They're
now 6-1.
IT'S ABOUT
RENEWABLE RESOURCES AND A WATERMELON PATCH
