Props to Mrs. Garner

I had a WONDERFUL English teacher my freshman year of high school. Her name was Mrs. Garner and she was a truly amazing blonde giantess. Read: Tall and beautiful.

Even though I was hanging out with the 'punks' and came to her class reeking of cigarettes{none of which I smoked}, she completely looked past that as saw that I was a smart kid who was just trying to figure my shit out. One time I was even the only person who got 100% on a paper out of all her classes! {{I refer to that as bad-assery}}

I had her the last class period of the day, fourth hour, which was right after lunch, so I was frequently late to her class. Because of this, she would make me stay after class as a form of 'detention'. All we would do though was talk about life. At the time, I just thought of her as a cool teacher and thought that I was getting away with a lot. As I look back on it now, though, I realize she was trying to be there for me and lead me to the right path, in a way. She was even the one who persuaded me to take Honors classes, which I never wanted to do. It truly was nice to just talk to someone about what my friends were doing and whether I liked it or not, what was going on at home, etc.

One day when I was staying late she was grading papers and reached into a drawer for a highlighter. I noticed she had 3 phones and immediately wanted to look through them. I asked whose phones they were, and sure enough I knew the kids and had gone to school with them for years. They were part of the popular crowd, which I despised at the time, and as much as Mrs. Garner should like them, she really didn't. You could tell those kids would have screwed with her had she been in high school, so it made it easy for me to convince her into letting me read through them. We sat at her desk and looked at all the text messages, cracking up. I learned that one boy was cheating on his girlfriend, one girl might be pregnant, and the other one was failing her classes.

Though the information was totally trivial to me, it was still fun to have an adult in my life who was on my side, so to speak, who understood what I was going through; someone who could completely break the rules in order to make me feel 'better' about myself. {{Though I'm sure it was satisfying in some way for her to read through those texts as well!}}

I really do give her a lot of credit to the way I turned out, though I didn't give much thought to it at the time. I wish she could see me today to know I turned out pretty well!

Fortunately, I had a few teachers who were quite amazing, or at least life altering, but I'll write about them at another time!

For now I'm going to enjoy a juicy and delicious pomegranate with my babe.