So Many Dishes

I was a high school senior, and at the beginning of the school year, my schedule was all kinds of screwy. I was registered for chemistry, but it wasn’t on my schedule. I was also supposed to be in Chorus, but my schedule said “after school” for that, even though it was a regular class.

It took a week or so to get everything straightened out. The major issue was that, although the chemistry class was five periods per week, one day was a double period for labs. There was no way to put me in a chemistry class without my missing one class per week in another subject. Fortunately, my music teacher told the guidance counselor that she thought I would still do fine if I missed a music theory class, so, with a switch of my history section, I finally had a workable schedule.

I was a little apprehensive about missing several chemistry classes. The teacher was new to the school, and I hadn’t heard anything about him other than that it was his first year teaching and he told everyone to call him Mr. P. When I walked into the classroom with my schedule, he seated me in the front row, handed me a textbook, and started the class, talking about entropy. In the process of demonstrating the principle, he threw an eraser over my head! I was definitely not sure what I thought about this teacher.

As the year went on, I realized that Mr. P was a really interesting person. He was an excellent teacher, and he had a crazy sense of humor. He was also the faculty advisor for the National Honor Society, and since I was in charge of a service project the group was doing, I spent a lot of time after school, working in his classroom. The more I talked to him, the more I liked him.

My friends started teasing me that I had a crush on Mr. P. I denied it, but, to myself, I admitted it was true. I kept telling myself it was stupid. After all, I was a high school senior. Wasn’t I too mature to have a crush?

Still, I found excuses to be around him. My chemistry lab partners were clueless, and we rarely finished labs in class. I always volunteered to be the person to stay after school to finish. When Mr. P talked in class about corned beef and cabbage, and how he and roommates didn’t know how to cook it, I convinced my mom to invite him—and the roommates—to dinner. I was a hopeless case.

June came, and with it, graduation. Our graduation ceremony was a Sunday afternoon. I had an appointment to get my hair done that Saturday morning. When I got home, there was a florist’s box containing a dozen pink roses. I think you can figure out who sent them 😄

When the graduation ceremony was over, my parents invited Ken, because now I no longer had to call him Mr. P, to our house for our family celebration. He asked me to go out with him the next night, and of course I said yes.

We were married two and one-half years later, and our anniversary this December will be our 55th. There’s no doubt that he’s my significant other.