BEAUTIFUL DORIAN

She was my high school creative writing teacher. 

I'm not sure she is even around anymore, so I'm using her real name. It's a beautiful name anyway. 

I've wrote about her before.

I had many teachers who were my "favorite" and did things for me that changed my life, but I've been thinking of Dorian lately.

Anytime I turned in a late paper, she docked me points, as she had the right to do, however, then found something in my paper that would give me extra credit and bring my points back up, so it was like my paper would never be docked for being late. 

I'd see her red marks in the story, +15 EC by the paragraph, and then on the front, it would show subtraction for LATE, then all the additions here and there. Back then I didn't understand. 

Now, I fully understand it and why she did it for me. She knew why they were late and knew they were done on time, but that I couldn't get to school that day to turn the paper in.

She probably was one teacher who taught me to be honest to my students when I taught, to tell the truth about why they may have caught me crying, to tell the truth about the injustices of the world, to explain why I was who I was.

I will never forget when she would read her own stories and poetry to the class. 

I even copied her poems somewhere in a notebook I still have here in this old house. 

Two of her poems, I will never forget. 

One was a funny one about getting older and each year was counted and a little ditty was listed about how things happened THAT year. 

As a 17 year old it was hilarious. As an older woman, now, so true, your hip will go out if your jeans are too tight or if you sleep wrong. Proven even this week! It ended that we are never as old as God, who she had been telling her travails to in the poem.

The other one was serious and heartbreaking. In it, she was writing to her fiancee, who had died before they were to be married. Poetry lines how she had never married anyone after his death because she never loved anyone as much as him. 

She invited me and a girl named Susan to go with her to the river and camp on the beach one weekend. She said we were her favorite writers in the class and it was like a prize. 

I was too scared to go because I knew enough about Susan to be cautious. I was too timid, naive, and shy.  I already had all the scenarios written in my head, bad and good, and I didn't think I could handle either.

Susan did not have a mother and I did not have a father. My dad had died when I was 12. Susan's mother had abandoned her and her brother with their alcoholic father. 

When we had to read aloud in class, Susan's stories were very mature and dark. Mine were a bunch of lies and over exaggerations about life being grand and all my dreams would come true.

So, all these years later, I woke from a nightmare, questioning in big caps, "WHY DID I NOT JUST GO TO THE BEACH WITH DORIAN AND SUSAN?"

It didn't really sound like a bad time. Dorian acted like she was hurt I didn't go and Susan said it rained all weekend and she got sand from the beach in her ass crack.