Dear J,
You’ll meet a lot of different people in your life that will impact you in many different ways. Some will inspire you to achieve great things and some will break you down. Some will make you wonder how you got on without them and some will make you wish you never met them. These past few days, I was confronted with two stories of two people I met at a young age. Both of these people impacted my life in some way and it’s sad to see what’s happened to them.
Rest in Peace
My dad was flipping through some sort of Aggie magazine when he started reading the names of Aggies that passed away and would be honored at Muster next year. One of the names on the list belonged to my fourth grade teacher. It was pretty shocking because I didn’t even think she was that old. I’m still not sure what she died of but it must have been some sort of disease.
I’m not going to lie and say we had some sort of Dead Poets Society “Oh Captain, my Captain” type relationship. One of the few things I remember about her is that I didn’t like her because she called my mom crazy one time. I didn’t hate her, I just didn’t like her. Another thing I remember about her (that was also mentioned in her obituary) is that she loved the Astros. I’m glad she got to see them win the World Series before she died.
One thing I am grateful to her for, though, is that when I was in her class, she recognized that I was a pretty decent writer. For one of our field trips, we went and watched the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra play at the Rudder Auditorium on the Texas A&M campus. It was probably one of the fanciest things I’d ever been to. One of the songs (or whatever you call them) they played was Peter and the Wolf. When we got back to school the next day, our class was told that there was an essay contest for all the school that attended the concert. For whatever reason, I didn’t want to participate.
On the day of the deadline, I still hadn’t written anything. When pressed by my teacher to write my essay, I wrote that I fell asleep during the concert and missed everything. She had me throw that entry away and write a real one. The essay I came up with actually won the contest! I got a check for $25, a framed copy of my essay, and my picture in the newspaper. I didn’t smile for the picture because I didn’t like my teacher then but I’m glad she pushed me to write that essay.
Locked Up
I’ve always loved sports ever since I was a little kid. I played baseball, basketball, and football growing up. Football was my shortest-lived sport, though. I only played it when I was in third grade. my dad sent me an article the other day showing me that the guy who coached me that year is going to jail for having inappropriate relations with a student. That’s crazy to me! It’s weird that had he not coached me as a third grader, our paths wouldn’t have crossed and it would’ve just been another gross teacher/student story to me only happening in a town I used to live in.
I’m not too surprised by people I know getting locked up for crazy stuff. Last year I was scrolling through the news and came across an article about a preacher getting arrested for committing indecent acts with a thirteen year old girl. I found out real quick that the sick individual who was arrested was a close friend and mentor of mine. Disgusting. I about threw up at my desk. After that, I haven’t really been surprised by too much.
-Jeston
Follow me: @DoHpodcast and @JestonTexeira
Jeston is a former student of Texas A&M, the author of Jesse Granger: Bushranger in Hit the Ground Running, and a volunteer at the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, TX.