Saturday, October 21, 2017

BIOLOGY CLASS AND THE WATERMELON PATCH






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