December 9, 2002

• I helped with communion at church on Sunday morning. Actually, this is something Dan and I do about twice a month. However, this week for some reason, I was pondering on the differences between life in a small town and belonging to a church in that town, and life and church in a big city.
  
  I grew up in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is a metropolitan area with Omaha, Nebraska, so it is not a small town, although when I lived there for some reason I thought it was. Living in Council Bluffs, most of the people I passed on the street were strangers. I knew people in my church, but they were “church people” and that was pretty much the only place that I saw most of them.
  
  As I was standing there holding the communion cup Sunday morning, I thought about how different my congregation in the little town I live in now is. The people who came to drink from my cup included parents of a student I remember very nostalgically from the first year that I taught, her sister, her 2 nieces, the plumber who did our new bathroom, and a student I see quite frequently when I sub. It was actually this student who set me thinking.
  
  I remembered the one time I did run into a teacher at church. I went to Mass on the way to school on a holy day once years ago. I slid into the pew late, because I hated to get up in the morning (still do), so I arrived almost everywhere on a dead run and a few minutes late. I mean, what difference did it make? I was there, wasn’t I? Mass wasn’t over, so my presence counted, didn’t it? I was just preparing to get comfortable in the pew when I happened to glance over at the person to my left.
  
  Oh, NO!! There, sitting next to me, was Miss Ketter!!! PLEASE GOD!!! NOT MISS KETTER!! I didn’t know she was Catholic. I had never seen her in my church before. For that matter, I had never seen her anywhere but the school before, and, to tell the truth, I am not really sure that I actually knew that they ever let her leave there. I just sort of pictured her in her classroom everlastingly prepared to terrify me.
  
  Miss Ketter taught honors math in my high school, and she may very well have been the most intelligent person I have ever known. She was one of the best teachers I ever had, and also one of the most terrifying. She kicked Bill out of honors geometry because he would not type his assignments. (Bill has really bad handwriting and she refused to try to read it.) It was a privilege to be in her class. She had the right to approve all students admitted to her tutelage, and if at any point she changed her mind, you were gone.
  
  Miss Ketter had the gift of being able to explain the most difficult concepts so they were understandable. She did not believe in homework. She said that once we left the room, she could not tell who did the work. She did tell us what we were responsible for knowing, but it was our choice how we mastered it. All our grades came from pop quizes and tests, and from a randomized selection system she used to call on us for in-class demonstrations of our knowledge. (This system also led to one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, but that is another story.) Under this random torture system, we would be called to the board to work a problem or a proof. We could be stopped in the middle of it, and someone else called up to finish. If the first person made an error, and the second person did not recognize it and correct it, both receieved an F for the day. I loved this class. It scared the heck out of me, though.
  
  So, now I am sitting in church, having arrived late, and Miss Ketter is sitting next to me. I figured God was getting me for the extra 10 minutes of sleep that made me late. I knelt straight and tried to appear very virtuous, and mostly I prayed for Mass to be over. At last it was, and I prepared to make my escape.
  
  Remember where I said I was going after Mass? That’s right – school. And remember what I said Miss Ketter did? Right again – she was a teacher at that very same school. So guess who walked me to school? That’s right, after appearing at church late and choosing the wrong pew, I had to walk over half a mile with my most loved and most feared teacher. Who ever said you don’t pay for your sins?
  
  Anyway, as I was standing there with my communion cup Sunday morning, I wondered how students in small towns feel when they run into teachers. I suspect it is quite different from the way I felt. Nobody here gets put into just one neat category and left there. Everyone plays many roles, and most of those roles are known to everyone else in the community. I think maybe teachers are actually pretty much like real people instead of eternal residents of the school. It’s better that way. I’m glad my kids grew up here.
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  The movie we saw after the play on Saturday turned out to be Frida. (For those of you who did not read that blog – yes – we saw Camelot on Saturday and then went to a movie!) I was not expecting to enjoy it all that much. We went with our friends Rod and Alix. They chose it, and my taste in movies is often not the same as theirs. I am so glad I went, though, because it is a wonderful movie!
  
  It is the story of the great Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. She had a fascinating and often very sad life. It is said that nobody who ever knew Frida Kahlo could forget her, and if the movie is any indication, that is certainly true.
  
  Do not go see it if nudity bothers you. There is quite a bit of it. I have to say that ordinarily I do not like that either.
  
  By the way – the production of Camelot was great too!
  

  • 9:45 am
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