Ok, so I remembered this story this morning when I was getting ready for work. My mind did this weird stream of consciousness thing, “Man, I wish I had retained some Spanish. I didn’t do well in Spanish in college, or in high school in fact. I wonder what Mr. Wyatt (my high school Spanish teacher) is up to right now. Thinking of my high school teachers, oh my lord, Mr. Rauch. He was the toughest teacher ever. Thank goodness though because it made me grow up a bit. Mr. Rauch was funny. He was the cheerleading coach and so tough that I dropped out the first day of TRY OUTS. He helped us out one time for the talent show. He was a good sport. He was strict though. OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT THIS STORY.”
So yeah, that’s what it’s like in my head. It was senior year and I was taking Genetics. Why? I DON’T KNOW. It wasn’t a requirement but I thought it sounded cool and interesting and kind of like Biology. Which it wasn’t. Not even close. Mr. Rauch, the stinker, knew exactly how hard it was and told us the first day, “You’ve signed up for this class and it is for a FULL YEAR. A year. You cannot drop this at the semester. Even if your parents call and beg me on your behalf. You CANNOT drop this.”
Heh, easy peasy. I can handle this. I got a B in Biology for crying out loud.
Yup, I had my parents call at the end of the semester. And he wouldn’t let me drop the class. Damn.
One day before class, we were all milling around waiting for class to start. We had about 5 minutes in between each class which wasn’t much since the classes were pretty spread out. The bell was about to ring when I realized I had left my lab notebook in my locker.
Oh hell.
Mr. Rauch was SO strict about these notebooks. They were a special type of scientific notebook and you couldn’t rip the pages out. If you messed up ONCE on the page, you had to start over on a new one. You had to underline everything with a ruler. You had to use certain colors of ink for certain sections. He meant business. And he was checking our notebooks that day. If you didn’t have it, you got an incomplete for that period.
As soon as I realized it, I TORE out of the room and hauled to my locker. As I was getting my notebook, the second bell rang and I was officially late for class. I ran back to the classroom and hid outside the door. Now, the classroom had two doors but I couldn’t go in the first one because that was the front of the room, where Mr. Rauch sat. So I peeked around the doorframe and saw him in front. When he turned away from the door, I ran down to the back door of the classroom. I was sitting in the second-to-last row but couldn’t get there without him seeing me. My friends could see me back there and tried to wave me in but I kept hissing at them to turn around and not draw attention to me. I was starting to get really nervous because he was going to take roll any minute and I could just yell, “Here!” from the hallway, could I? Plus, I was the only one not in my seat. A little suspicious, I’d say.
Luckily, God was on my side. There was an office attached to his classroom and his phone rang. He got up to answer it and I hit the deck, crawled on my hands and knees with my notebook inbetween my teeth. The SECOND I got to my seat, looking flushed and flustered, he came back into the room. Very slowly, he made his way back to my seat and without saying anything, looked behind my desk for any suspicious paraphernalia. Ha HA. I had nothing except my notebook and backpack. I smiled nicely at him and he gave me the side-eye and returned to the front.
Mr. Rauch, if you ever read this, forgive me but I had never been prouder in my life. I think it was finally payback for how hard you made that class.
