Magical Mentors

 Dear Fishes-

     I've been gone because I got married recently and doing all that is expected within a shared relationship. I also moved as well, so that was fun....Finally living with my husband and enjoying married life. Today, I watched something that moved me to tears. It was an old acceptance speech from Mr.Rogers where he invited everyone watching him to take 10 seconds of silence and remember those that have brought you to where you're at now. The first person that came to my mind was my senior high school art teacher that had a degree in English, Chinese, French, and was an artist as well with some training. 

     Little did I know that he would utterly change my life, for the better. That was the year that I decided to live with intention. I joined a bunch of clubs at school, started caring about academics, and wanted to change the direction of my future. I wasn't necessarily a rudimentary student, but I had allowed going to sixteen schools during my childhood get me down with how I felt. My father was in the Army and then he worked for the government--we traveled more with the government than we did with the Army. I remember for six years straight that it was a new place every year....combined with the fact that sometimes, my dad would put us in schools and then take us out three times in one school year. The fact that I have college education behind me is miraculous, really. It would have been easy to get lost in the system because we were never in a place long enough to get continuous education. I wasn't a migrant, but I felt like one at times because I never knew where we'd end up and for how long, so I stopped caring. I did ok and I made effort but when I got left behind in school was when we lived in Aurora, CO and then we moved to Madison, WI. The school I went to was two years ahead of where we were at in school in CO and I was forced from being an "A" student in math to getting "D's" in math because of where we were living at. Madison was pretty bougie and so we didn't fit in, so that was another issue as well. We were financially challenged. I blame this on the fact that both of my parents were raised poor so they had issues with managing money. My dad didn't gamble but in some ways he was a gambler with going to Goodwills, vintage stores, thrift stores, yard sales, and any sale he could get his hands on at the mall. He didn't discriminate about where something came from. If he could buy it, and someone would provide him with 10 minutes of joy, he was sold. 

      I felt helpless a lot as a child, mainly because we were forgotten a lot as kids by my dad. He was physically there, but not emotionally. You know when most parents go looking for their kids in a store because they ran off, it was the other way around. My dad was constantly leaving us and forgetting about us in stores. He always walked really fast, so it was hard to keep up with him. My mom was floundering around just to stay alive. She lived in the era of having undiagnosed type two diabetes for years and also had depression that made anyone else depressed around her. 

     In steps the aids of books that made a difference in my life. It was through books that I gained understanding, a false sense of self (through ridiculous self help books like Tony Robbins), and other books that were imperative to my quest for betterment and the belief that things could be better than what they were. I read The Book Of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, I read a lot of LDS religious hard core books like "Jesus the Christ" from James E. Talmage (read that when I was 17), and I also read "Embraced by the Light (read that when I was 14)." That book alone made me have an awakening of sorts that I loved people but had never really connected to them prior because of not wanting to be seen because of sexual and physical abuse that had happened to me and the fear of being hurt by adults. I decided at age 14 that I wanted more of a life than what I was living. 

    I engaged with rowdy kids and kids that didn't care about academics because I was trying to be social, or so I thought. I would put my heart and soul into people. Sometimes adults would think that I was doing/being bad but in actuality, I was the one that was trying to sway individuals from doing bad things. I remember friends trying to get me to smoke when I was in eighth grade and I had a huge group of people agging me on, but I decided not to do it. I'm so glad I didn't get into that, that would have been a slippery slope full of commercials of why you shouldn't smoke on blast. I'm grateful I never got into alcoholism, even though it was offered to me in eighth grade. I hung out with kids who were seniors in high school when I was an eighth grader. It was an interesting dichotomy. One of the seniors in question got freaked out when my family moved in because my brother beat out a bunch of people for a college scholarship, through grades and good test taking, but then was almost disqualified because we hadn't lived there long enough. Thus another plight of those that move around a lot--you don't get access to local scholarships. He ended up getting the scholarship, which was good because he needed it and it was to the University of Wisconsin. 

       Anywho, getting back to why I'm writing this post to begin with...(insert a squirrel here)...When I moved to Bako, as a junior in high school, I had been living in Simi Valley, CA prior so moving to Bako was a plethora of adjustments. Bako (Bakersfield, CA) was hotter than hell (questionable? I know). I hadn't ever lived in a place that had Tuley fog as it were where you can't see five feet in front of you when it's really bad in the winter time, if I remember correctly. 

       My parents had stupidly sold their Simi Valley house prematurely and lost money because of it and we moved to Bako. My parents would have grossed a nice nest egg had they lived in the Simi house longer than a year and a half. My dad took a huge pay cut because it was thought that he had M.S. at the time (he didn't, it was Parkinson's disease, we later found out). He took a pay cut because he was working at the V.A. hospital in L.A. and he had two people under him that were disabled and that couldn't do their jobs, so he was having to step in and do their jobs for them. The stress of doing 3 peoples' jobs stressed my dad out, so he took a huge pay cut and we moved to Bako. It was like in "The Grapes of Wrath" where the family moves from OK to Bako. I was born in OK, so it's actually kind of funny to me that that book meant a lot more to me because of that significance. 

    When we looked at the house that my dad had bought in Bako, we couldn't believe our eyes. It was the nicest house we had ever lived in, in our lives. We all asked if it was a joke and he said "no" and we were delighted that it didn't have issues because usually my dad would buy fixer uppers and try to repair them but lacked the skills necessary to do so and youtube, so he would just make a huge mess that my mom was always stuck with cleaning up. 

    Things weren't peachy, so off to the races we went. Bako was behind in schooling compared to WI, so that was good for me. When it came time to do ACT's and SAT's I didn't do well on the SAT because we didn't know that I had learning disabilities at the time. I didn't bother taking the ACT because 1) my parents didn't seem to care, and 2) the money involved to educate me for such tests wasn't seen as worthwhile at the time. I'm happy to say that though I scored poorly on the SAT test, I was on the dean's list a bunch of times at CSUB, during my freshman through junior years there and I maintained at the time an impressive GPA, considering that I didn't have the educational system that most had growing up. When I first entered college I had to take a rudimentary math and English class so that I could catch up to speed with college classes--very humbling to say the least, but now I'm almost finished with my third bachelor's degree and second associate's degree, so the SAT's as a determinant can suck it. You determine your fate, not some silly test that most pass only so that they can fail when they get to college because they're too busy partying up and don't understand how to go to "college." 

     Insert my best teacher ever____________ I shall leave it blank to respect his privacy. He knows who he is and I called him today to let him know that his name was the first person to come to my mind after I saw that Mr.Roger's clip. I know he has affected countless other individuals during his time as a high school teacher, but he really blew me away with how dynamic and awesome he is. You don't come into contact with people like him every day. He's a renaissance man and a lot of why I wanted multiple degrees when I was younger. He seemed to be good at everything that he put his mind to, and why shouldn't he?! He was also a Marine. Give Props where props are due. If you went to Stockdale High School and had the privilege of having this teacher/mentor, give him a call. He would want you to reach out and connect...unless you've been blocked...lol 

    This teacher unfailingly kept getting me to reach further into my soul to produce artwork that I didn't think I could do. I hadn't really been allowed to previously--it was liberating, really. I attribute my success in Design school to him because he taught me how to "let go" really and produce from a place that I had never known before. I know he inspired a lot of individuals and I remember one of my friends during art class that would only draw trees during his class--that was all he could do for lots of reasons and the teacher was understanding and kept encouraging him regardless of how many trees that he would draw. My other friend was insane and he would cause all sorts of drama at our art table...I still laugh about it even now. This teacher took a keen interest in me and many others and made us better people. He looked past our scars and brokenness and tried to show us that there is much more out there than what we've been through. 

    It was a delight talking with him and just giving him props for how important of a role model he was for me during that time. He entered an art piece of mine at Bakersfield's Art Museum and I won a prize, which was pretty awesome and hard for me to believe. I had been used to winning coloring contests in my youth for military kids coloring contests, but this was the first time that I had ever been given recognition for something that was an art piece that I had made from scratch.

    I'm friends with him on fb and I'm grateful that we're still connected. He still inspires me with his dad wisdom today. Just the same as when I was a senior in high school. He brings joy to everyone who knows him and it'll be a great loss when he leaves this earth because he is like a bright shining star giving direction for all of those that have lost their way. I can't say enough good things about this individual. If you've met him, you'll know instantly who I'm talking about. 

See ya in the sea anemone, 

B