Teachers I have known - Footnote to Chapter 1

Lest I leave the impression that Mrs. Lazurus was not one of my favorite teachers, let me say that even though she nipped my tennis career in the bud, she did lots of other good things for me.

And I really wish we had made the Grandma Terrill connection earlier, because once I figured it out, Mrs. Lazurus had died. It would have been a real opportunity to tell her how much I had learned from her. And how the things she taught me were things I used my whole life.

(Which is a good argument for telling people how important they are to you now, not later!)

She seemed to understand my frustration with P.E. In spite of dressing daily, getting A's on the rules' tests, and having clean, ironed gym clothes every Monday morning, I still always got a C in P.E. because the skills' tests had the greatest weight. So she qualified me for Corrective P.E. on the basis of my pronated ankles. I got an A in Corrective P.E. (That's a blog posting of its own!!)

And when I signed up for her Modern Dance class, she wondered if the B I'd earned would "ruin" my GPA!!

(Of course, those years, math started getting harder and harder and Trig and Algebra 3 were my C grades instead of P.E.!)

But as a high school 10th grader (the year high school started in my district - we had the 3 year variety) she addressed my P.E. class and gave me some of the best advice I've ever received. She said, you know, ladies, your periods are a fact of life - and they are going to be a regular part of your life for a long time. So you can shut down every month for a week or so and just lose part of your life. Or you can get out there and run around and feel better in the process.

My Grandma Connie gave me similar advice one summer when I was moping around. She said, go take a walk, you'll feel better. And you know, to this day, a walk makes me feel better!

I combed my high school yearbooks for a picture of Mrs. Lazurus - and they are not to be found. I don't know if she had some metaphysical objection to being photographed, or if she just wasn't there on picture day.

So just take my word for it - she was tall, striking, blond, and when she wasn't in P.E. clothes, she looked sort of earthmotherish. And her first name was Keo.