Re-meeting Rob Wells

Rob Wells walked into my class in the fall of 1998.  He couldn’t sit still and he couldn’t stop talking.  He was a mess!  But it was his infectious smile and persistent good mood that hooked and pulled me in.  I didn’t know it yet, but my life as a teacher would never be the same. 

Unless you’re behaving badly, it’s hard to stand out on the first day of school, but not for Rob.  It’s been ten years and I can’t really remember exactly what it was about Rob that drew me to him.  Maybe it was his quirky sense of humor.  Maybe it was his constant state of disorganization.  Maybe it was his non-stop stream of odd questions.  Maybe it was the fact watching Rob interact with the teachers and other students reminded me a little too much of myself.  

Whatever the reason, a bond was formed that I’ve only felt with four or five students in the 15 years I’ve been a teacher.  I remember most, if not all, of my students.  And I enjoy seeing all of them, but with these few students, seeing them is more like seeing family.   

I recently found Rob on Facebook and we met for lunch this week.  

Rob has had an incredible 10 years!  He lived in Paris, France for three years during high school, and is currently a college student with a part-time job as a banker.  (Not with AIG!)  

We went to Snuffer’s, shared cheese fries, talked and enjoyed each other’s company. 

Before this, I hadn’t had the privilege of re-meeting any of my former students from that far in the past.  I must say I was very pleased! 

When Rob was in my class, I remember wondering about what course his life would take.  Rob wasn’t one of the students I worried about, but I have been curious for the past ten years.  

Maybe all teachers do this, (down deep inside I hope they do) but I can’t help wondering/predicting what kind of adults my students will become.  I always just expected that Rob would grow to become a fun loving, responsible person.  

It’s nice to see that, at least in Rob’s case, my predictions were right on the money.  

                   Rob gave me this card in 1999.  

I found it stapled to the wall in my garage.

The Things I Remember...

When I was in 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade the world was a different place.  

I’d spend the night at Ronnie Vickery’s house and we’d stay awake until the wee hours of the morning.  His family had a kind of game room above their detached garage, and that’s where we would play pool, horse around, and just as the sun was coming up, eventually drift off to sleep.  

Late into the evening we’d roam around the neighborhood in search of entertainment.  I don’t remember exactly what type(s) of entertainment we were hoping to find.  I don’t remember if we ever really put all that much thought into what we were doing.  And I don’t remember much about the specifics of what, in the way of entertainment, that we ever actually found.  All I know is that I loved spending the night at Ronnie’s! 

I do remember that on one the above-mentioned evenings we decided to go streaking.  Thinking back, I can only imagine we were inspired by Ray Stevens’ song The Streak.  We were probably up in the game room playing pool and listening to the radio (This was Houston, and based on our ages we were probably listening to 104 KRBE) when his song came on the radio.  And the wheels began to spin.  

What we decided to do was head out shirtless with only gym shorts on.  We’d walk down to the end of the block, take off the gym shorts and run around the block.  

All we knew is that streaking was running naked.  It didn’t occur to either of us at the time that, even as the song suggested, to truly be “streaking” you needed to somewhere where not only people could see you, but somewhere where having a naked person might disrupt the venue.   We were streaking around the block of a dimly lit neighborhood at 3:30am…not really the same thing. 

However, like I said, that never crossed our minds.  So off we went.  Reaching the end of the block we made a quick, but extremely thorough, scan for life forms.  Finding none, we stripped off out shorts and took off!  

I’m not sure how far we got before we started talking, but I’m sure the conversation went something like this:

 

“This is cool! Right?” 

“Yeah!  I think I expected it to feel different.” 

“I know.  It’s not all that much different that just running, except I feel a little silly carrying these gym shorts.”  

“So, how far are you supposed to go?  I mean to really call it streaking.” 

“I don’t think there’s set distance requirement.  I’m pretty sure as long as you’re running and naked then it counts.” 

“So, in theory, we could stop now and still have completed our objective?” 

“I suppose, but we should probably run a bit farther.” 

“Um, why?” 

“Well that way when we tell the guys about this, and they ask how far we ran, we won’t have to say only about half a block.” 

“I guess that makes sense.” 

“We could stop here and just say we ran around the whole block…I mean who would know?”

 “That sounds good to me!”

 

And that was the end of our streaking.  We stopped, put our shorts back, turned around and walked back to the garage.  I think in the end we only ran about six houses, but we were cool. 

Like I said, when I was in 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade the world was a different place.  

Or is it?