Because I have some innate need to let you really get to know me. I am going to start writing a post a week with stories from my past. Ya know just to give you a little insight about what you are dealing with. I am calling this Marcy Then.
It was 1984 and my hair was big and my acid wash jeans were tight. I balanced Cheerleading, theatre performances and honors classes. One of which was Honors Biology with Mr. Riddley. Mr. Riddley was a calm and patient man. Not the most charismatic of teachers- but a good teacher and especially understanding. If someone was late to a test he would say ‘no problem you can stay a few minutes after.’ If someone forgot their book ‘no problem you can borrow mine’. I remember too that I was the ONLY Caucasian person in the class with the other seats filled with my fellow Honor’s students of Asian decent. My fellow classmates would not dare speak out of turn or question a teacher’s request. Never. Ever. So the day came when Mr. Riddley announced we would be dissecting FETAL PIGS in class. Not the ordinary frogs that you would expect- NOPE we were special, we got PIGS with pink skin looking like infant corpses. It was disturbing to say the least. So disturbing-that I raised my hand and informed Mr. Riddley that I would not be participating. My classmates literally GASPed. There was silence. Calmly Mr. Riddley asked why not? And I stood up (in a dramatic way befitting a teenage theater club president) “Sir, I refuse to participate in the antiquated exercise. Anything that can be learned from this can be explained with textbooks and models. It is not necessary to have to do this for education. This is simply barbaric”.
More. Silence.
Mr. Riddley didn’t know what to do. He took me outside. He started to say something-but stopped. And he looked me in the eye and said “I respect this.”
I sat in his back office the entire week. I organized all his files and specimens. I straightened out his desk and charts on the walls. I basically ‘Martha’d’ his place a little each day. And I sprayed air freshener every 10 minutes to kill the horrifying smell of formaldehyde from the other room. He told the class I was doing extra work to make up for missing the PIG slaughter they had to endure. He would come back to the office and talk with me a little. I learned he was once a track star and close to being in the Olympics. He had been married once. His wife died giving birth to their first son. The son died the next day. Biology was a real love and passion for him. So after all this – I felt a little bad about the pig thing. On the last day, I told him as much. And he said ‘Never feel bad for being who you are. This is who you are. You are damn lucky to know that already.’ I learned a lot that year. Not about pig guts…but about how powerful speaking up can be….and I got an A+. Thanks Mr. Riddley….you taught me well.
*Informative note: never ever ever google ‘pig dissection’ looking for images for a post. Ew. Gag. Ewwwwwwww!
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
A frog was enough for me and so I didn’t go any further in Bio.
Thanx but no thanx!!!
Where in the dark recesses of your mind do you dredge this stuff up from? I love how you channel MarcyThen.
SoliloquyThen was so naive. She doesn’t remember much….
Awesome post. I guess you wouldn’t have liked watching autopsies with me at the VA.
Love the idea for a series. Can I steal it?
What a great teacher. What a great story.
awww he sounds like an awesome teacher! btw I thought disecting frogs and rats was not nice but fetal pigs? um no I don’t think so…
LOVE the new series. And this post was great. I wish I had your balls in high school. When I took AP Bio in high school, our teacher wasn’t nearly as understanding. If we opted out of the pig dissection, we had to write a HUGE research paper- I think the teacher purposely made it impossible so no one would choose that route.
I ended up doing the dissection, but I brought my camera and took silly pictures with the little pigs. (I amused myself at the time, but now? Omg, I want to hurl.) I guess the only way to get over the gross-factor for me was to try to make it funny.
After we did the pigs, we dissected sharks. Mine was pregnant. Your teacher would have had the cleanest office at school if that was in your lesson plan!
“marcy then ” is exactly the same person as “marcy now”.
I didn’t realize it back then,( after all, you were just a child! What did cildren know about life?) but I do now because of your unique ability to recall specific moments from your childhood, complete with the nuances and emotions and observations of that very moment. You locked it away in order to bring it back at a later time!
P.S. It’s same way you lock away years worth of tiny bits of useless trivia and are able to have 100% recall whenever you want to. weird!!
I so envy MarcyThen for her ability to speak up. I know MarcyNow has the same abilities. Mr. R sounds inspired.
Dude. Awesome post. For reals.