TRIBUTE TO A TEACHER

They say a student is lucky to have a great, life-changing teacher in their time in the classroom. I must be a truly blessed man. I’ve had three.

One was a brilliant and affable former militar y historian who made my university career as good as I hoped it ever would be. Another was a high school teacher who did what’s often considered impossible — taught history well, in a way that appealed to the smartest kids in the class rather than pandering to the rest. And the third was my teacher in both the Seventh and Eighth grades. You’re probably only reading this column because that man, Mr. L, as we called him, taught me not just how to write, but to love writing.

Mr. L was a quirky guy. There’s just no getting around that. Other teachers would tell us after summer break about that great family trip they’d taken to P.E.I. or some such. Mr. L would tell you about rollerblading in the dead of night through a New Orleans graveyard with a voodoo priest. Other teachers would display a ceramic apple and a few photos of their families on their desk. Mr. L had horror shop novelty items and a truly astonishing array of Daffy Duck memorabilia.

Other teachers may have viewed students like myself as a challenge, or even a bother. Mr. L viewed me as a kindred spirit.

I was a pretty smart kid. But I never had any ability to focus on something I didn’t see the point of. (I have not entirely outgrown this, but I digress.) Mr. L didn’t see that as a problem, the way other teachers did, especially when it was their class I failed to take an interest in. He just took it in stride and said, bare essentials of education aside, there was no reason for someone to be forced to learn something they didn’t care about at the cost of not learning about something they did care about. He didn’t tolerate slackers or apathy or laziness. But working hard at something that exhilarated you, instead of plodding through what the Board of Education manual insisted a student of such-and-such a grade level should be studying? That was fine by him. He’d make up the marks later.

What this meant, in my case, was very little geography and history. I loved both subjects, but was past whatever the manual said I should know by then. Ditto most (but not quite all) of the assigned readings. Again, I was beyond what was expected. Instead, I spent most of the days — four out of seven periods, virtually every day for two straight years — doing research and writing assignments. He’d give me a topic, or let me pick one, and send me off to the library. Using whatever books were on hand and that newfangled Internet thing, I’d prepare essays on … whatever.

The topics were as diverse and wide-ranging as Mr. L’s hobbies and interests: Norway, the USS Yorktown, the Wright Brothers, Quebec City, George Orwell. He also insisted I keep a daily journal — and was fine with me typing it up on the computer in the library, instead of writing it by hand. We filled binders with the printouts. My grade depended entirely on how confident he was that I’d actually worked hard and done my best.

Not bad training for a career in journalism, you’ll probably agree. And the timing couldn’t have been better. I was a good kid, but there were also causes for alarm: I was young, had a lot of freedom, and was often bored out of mind. Many a young man has gone down the wrong path when those stars align. But Mr. L, and a good group of friends he also took under his wing, helped keep me on a decent path. I didn’t have time to start smoking or doing drugs. I had to figure out how the hell aerodynamic lift worked by Friday.

I wasn’t the only kid so favoured, but there weren’t many of us. Mr. L was scrupulously professional and fair to the other students, but he also felt — and even quietly told me once, as Grade Eight graduation approached — that most students didn’t need a lot of special atten- tion, because they weren’t special. They were ordinary, he said, which was fine — the world needed ordinary people. But they didn’t need to be pushed to be ordinary, or given the chance to be ordinary, or helped to discover what ordinary was. They had the advantage, he said, of already being exactly what they were meant to be. The rest of us — “us,” he said — had to work harder at it.

Had I been older and wiser, I might have seen that as a hint of sadness in a brilliant man who was probably no better at getting along to go along than I ever have been. But I wasn’t, and just nodded.

As the years went on, we kept crossing paths. At first by accident, browsing the aisles of a bookstore we both liked, but a few times on purpose, just to catch up. He was a Post reader, I learned, and he read this column regularly. He’d also catch me on TV or the radio from time to time. Our politics differed, but he never cared. He was proud about what I’d done.

And he had reason to be proud. A lot of it’s thanks to him. He gave me more than a gentle nudge on this path. He practically grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me into writing. My banker may have preferred he set me on course to be something a little more lucrative, but a writer suits me fine, and suited him just fine, too.

He retired two years ago. I learned that when we ran into each other, by coincidence, at that same old bookstore, Christmas before last. I’d long since moved away from that area and was only there killing time before a social engagement later that night. We caught up a bit: I’d become a father, he’d recently retired. We agreed to meet up soon, but caught up in the whirlwind of parenthood, I never followed up. I meant to, but … it just kept slipping away.

Mr. L died last week. He was 57. I don’t know any details yet, and I’m trying to move enough parts around this week to let me make his memorial service today. I’m not sure I’ ll make it, so this column, this tribute to him, is my backup plan. If I had to guess, he’d consider it the better part of the bargain. But showing up is the least I can do for a man who meant a hell of a lot to a teenager just discovering the magical feeling you get when you put words on a page.

My friend understood something very important: the ordinary don’t need any help being what they’re meant to be