In 10 days, I should be able to walk again. I haven't walked a single step in almost 5 weeks. Right now, nothing sounds better than being able to go up and down the stairs in my own house.
I have a huge, unwieldy cast on my left foot, up to just below my knee. It's not the kind of cast I expected - plaster or fiberglass. It's a huge steel, padding and Velcro contraption that comes on and off. For the first 3 weeks, the foot and ankle were also wrapped in gauze, stretchy bandages and a thin "sock" covering. The cast strapped on over that. I had to take it off several times a day to put ice packs on my foot, and again to shower, with a waterproof rubber boot over the wrapping.
On the one hand, it's nicer than the fiberglass or plaster cast. I don't have the unbearable itch issues that I hear are unavoidable with those. On the other hand, while there's a half inch steel plate, about 14 inches by 6 inches, under my foot, on top of my foot there's little more than padding and straps to protect the area with broken bones. If something hits it, falls on it, steps on it, the results would be painful and catastrophic, so I'm extremely protective of the entire leg.
And geez, is this thing heavy and awkward! It extends so far past my toes in order to protect my feet. I get it - so many times, I've had that part of the cast whack walls and door frames. I've even had it be stepped on in the movie theater. I know why it's there. Still, imagine having a half inch thick slab of steel on your foot. Even simple stuff like sleeping is awkward. Imagine sleeping in a steel soled snow boot, and you'll have some idea what this is like.
Since the stitches came out at three weeks, I no longer need the rubber shower boot. My family finds my new foot both creepy and fascinating. It's much narrower and straighter than it was before. I can't quite get used to the big toe's nail facing upwards. The incision sites still look pretty gruesome (my middle daughter refuses to look), but that "train track" look will fade. I've had so many stitches; I am not worried about scars on my feet.
I've explained what I've had done so many times in the past few weeks. I'm tired of repeating, but thankful for people's concern.
I had most of the bone structure in my foot rebuilt. I had bunions, collapsed arches, overlapping toes, a big toe turned at a 45 degree angle, bone spurs, and shortened tendons. That's the shortened version. Apparently, almost half of the bones in my foot were not load bearing, even though they were designed to be. My podiatrist took hold of my foot and folded it lengthwise, flapping it like a wing. "See that?" he said. "It's not supposed to do that."
What I'd noticed most, of course, was the pain. I've known that I had bunions since I was 9. The collapsed arches were diagnosed about two decades later, and suddenly so many things about my feet made sense.
I have a lot of small skeletal issues. I had TMJ (joint issues in my jawbone) as a kid. I'm knock kneed, plus my knees bow backwards. Since I was 13 and fell off of a horse onto it, one knee has been noticeably worse than the other. It aches in the cold, and both knees will occasionally collapse when overstressed. I have a mild S curve scoliosis. Its major contributions are making my hips uneven, and therefore one leg longer than the other, and causing muscle pinches in my shoulder that occasionally need treated.
Of course, any time I said, "my feet hurt" or "my back hurts" for most of my life, I'd get patronizing advice to "lose weight and exercise more." Or I'd hear, "Well, so do my mine, but I'm going out dancing anyway." The older I get, the more convinced I become that our parameters are vastly different. What some people call "pain," I call "normal" or "uncomfortable." By the time I say "pain," it's knifing, and I can barely stand to let my feet touch the ground.
I hated, too, being told that my feet would feel better if I went barefoot. "It's healthier! It's the natural state of your foot!"
"But it hurts," I'd say, and thus unleash a lecture on toughening up, or giving it a chance, or something else equally annoying. I need practically orthopedic shoes with astonishingly good arch support before my feet feel better. It's in my bone structure; whether or not the soles of my feet would toughen up was not the point.
Well, let's hope that's past tense now - "needed" orthopedic shoes. I'm hoping that the new bone structure will be fabulous.
I needed bones cut and repositioned, tendons lengthened, screws and rods and a plate installed. The doctor estimated that it would take an hour and a half; it took almost three hours. "Things were a bit more complicated than we thought," he said. "That toe gave me a hard time."
I thought that cutting the bones would be the worst part, but it wasn't. Rotating that big toe really ached. I told him that at my three week checkup, and he said, "We took out and threw away the parts of the bone that hurt. They're gone now." Oh. OK.
The doctor told me that the post-op pain would be about equivalent to a broken bone. I've had those before, so I had some sense of that. The first two days would be agonizing; after that, it would get better. That's about how it worked, too. The first two days, I didn't want anyone to even breathe on me. I couldn't let the bedclothes touch the cast - the weight was too awful. The second day, a towel fell off the rack onto my foot, and you should have heard the noise I made - "AAAAAHHHH!!!!!" How ridiculous is an existence in which a falling towel hurts? Of course, part of that reaction was also shock, and the realization that other, heavier things might fall on me.
Luckily, the only other thing that's fallen on me is a plunger. The cast was off - I was getting out of the shower - so it smarted, but I wasn't terrified. It had been over a month by then.
My worst fear was messing things up while we were still waiting for the ends of the cut bones to grow together and knit. If I ripped out the screws, or tore the healing ligaments, or something else hideous, the damage might be too great to repair. The longer it's been, the more I relax. I haven't been in any significant pain since the first week, and now, in week 5, I think that things are pretty well solidifying in there.
The worst part has been the patience of waiting this long to be able to put any weight on it. I can't put any weight at all on it until I get x-rays in another week and a half, and get the OK. While I'm not in pain, and I'm getting around really well for someone with one working leg, I am practically counting the hours until I can WALK again.
Soon, though, we'll go through the whole thing again, for my right foot. While I want it done, I can't really even think about that right now.
Tick tock!
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Saturday, December 14, 2013
School Photos
The only professional photos I ever had taken of me as a kid were school photos. We never did family portraits, or even those department store photographs. I always wanted some, and envied friends who got them, but it was simply not something that my family needed to spend money on.
I remember being so nervous the day before my kindergarten photo. I had to wear a favorite dress (despite being a tree climbing, ditch wading, scabbed knees, dirty socks, always-a-mess tomboy, I wore dresses almost exclusively until about fourth grade. Go figure.) I had to have my hair in braids, with red ribbon bows. It was a favorite hairstyle, once I was old enough to tolerate having my hair combed, and the bows were a big deal. I remember that some movie or book character inspired the ribbons, but I've long since forgotten who it was.
I loved the photo then, and I love it now.
This is me in first grade:
New front teeth, hair in curls - this is still identifiably me, but it's a more dressed up, formal version of myself. I think she's cute. I remember sleeping with my hair in foam curlers the night before. Entire generations after me have no idea what foam curlers are.
This is third grade. My favorite part of this photo was the rhinestone owls on my hair pins. I loved them so much that I wore them for two years' worth of photos in a row, even after one of the owls broke off and my dad expoxied it on the wrong way, so that one owl was upside down.
By fourth grade, I'd decided that curls and dresses were for little girls, so I looked like my everyday self.
Those are polyester knit overalls, but the way, with an applique of a girl farmer on the front. I thought that they were kind of fancy because they had ruffles on the straps. Don't mock them - I loved those overalls. I kept wearing them even after I fell, skidded down the asphalt of my cousin's street on my knees, and had to patch the holes with the only patches we could find that were big enough to cover the damage, American flags.
By fifth grade, I'd clearly hit what my older daughters refer to as the universal "awkward stage."
That's a Ten Commandments necklace; I loved it. But hello, acne, my constant companion. So nice of you to show up and stay for the rest of my life.
I was so not pleased with my fifth grade pictures that in sixth grade, I decided to revisit what had worked in the past, and go back to curls, in the hope of being adorable again.
I hated these. I barely gave any to my friends, and I disliked sending them to relatives. In retrospect, they're not as awful as I thought they were then, but it's still not my best look.
In seventh grade, I tried to look both more normal and more grown up.
Don't mock the scarf. It was 1978, and men and women alike did the knotted scarf around the neck thing. This was as fashionable as I got. (OK, I once owned white, knee high boots.)
My major reaction to these was, "Geez, I'd better get those braces on my teeth soon." I believe that I referred to myself as Fang.
Here's high school, ninth and tenth grade.
See, these look pretty normal, until you consider the time period. Every other female on the planet, it seemed, had the Farrah Fawcett hairdo - big, fluffy, feathered layers. My big sister's version was less over the top than most:
I simply could not imagine having to curl and hairspray my hair every day, or having to get it trimmed every month. At 47, I still trim my own hair, maybe three times a year, and I have no layers, highlights, dyed grays or anything else that would take actual time and effort. Who wants to fuss with their hair in the morning? If I can't be done "styling" in 2 minutes, I'm grumpy.
So, while I don't have any photos of fashion faux pas, like a mullet, if you flip through my yearbook you'll see that I (unintentionally) stand out by virtue of my lack of big hair. I graduated in 1984; almost everyone either had a mullet or big hair. (It goes without saying, doesn't it, that I also never straightened my hair or gave it a "blowout"? Too much effort! What's the point?)
This is my high school senior portrait:
Yeah, it's a beat up copy. This is the copy that my dad carried in his wallet, so it's worn out and beaten up. I actually liked the photo with the big, sunny smile better, but Dad (and my best friend) liked this one. I thought that my teeth looked too chipmunky.
I was so happy that I liked the photos from my senior portrait shoot. I'd lived in fear of hating them, and was delighted that they were flattering.
The necklace I'm wearing belonged to my mom. All of her daughters wore it in their senior portraits.
I was disappointed, at the time, to wear something besides the comedy/tragedy mask necklaces that I wore every day, but I'm a sentimentalist, and tradition is a big deal to me. (My daughters have also had photos taken, as high school seniors, wearing the heart necklace.) As time goes by, I'm even happier that I wore it.
Just as a final note, did you notice anything else about my photos? If you grew up with me, you know this without my even asking. Yep, that's right - I'm wearing blue in almost every one. I think I have 3 or 4 school portraits in a color that is not blue. Ninety percent of my wardrobe was blue.
Blue makes me happy.
I remember being so nervous the day before my kindergarten photo. I had to wear a favorite dress (despite being a tree climbing, ditch wading, scabbed knees, dirty socks, always-a-mess tomboy, I wore dresses almost exclusively until about fourth grade. Go figure.) I had to have my hair in braids, with red ribbon bows. It was a favorite hairstyle, once I was old enough to tolerate having my hair combed, and the bows were a big deal. I remember that some movie or book character inspired the ribbons, but I've long since forgotten who it was.
I loved the photo then, and I love it now.
This is me in first grade:
New front teeth, hair in curls - this is still identifiably me, but it's a more dressed up, formal version of myself. I think she's cute. I remember sleeping with my hair in foam curlers the night before. Entire generations after me have no idea what foam curlers are.
This is third grade. My favorite part of this photo was the rhinestone owls on my hair pins. I loved them so much that I wore them for two years' worth of photos in a row, even after one of the owls broke off and my dad expoxied it on the wrong way, so that one owl was upside down.
By fourth grade, I'd decided that curls and dresses were for little girls, so I looked like my everyday self.
Those are polyester knit overalls, but the way, with an applique of a girl farmer on the front. I thought that they were kind of fancy because they had ruffles on the straps. Don't mock them - I loved those overalls. I kept wearing them even after I fell, skidded down the asphalt of my cousin's street on my knees, and had to patch the holes with the only patches we could find that were big enough to cover the damage, American flags.
By fifth grade, I'd clearly hit what my older daughters refer to as the universal "awkward stage."
That's a Ten Commandments necklace; I loved it. But hello, acne, my constant companion. So nice of you to show up and stay for the rest of my life.
I was so not pleased with my fifth grade pictures that in sixth grade, I decided to revisit what had worked in the past, and go back to curls, in the hope of being adorable again.
You know how some girls are effortlessly fashionable and chic, especially after they hit puberty? Not me. I totally missed out on whatever brain chemicals cause a person to know what looks good on them. I have no flair for hair, makeup, clothes - any of it.
I hated these. I barely gave any to my friends, and I disliked sending them to relatives. In retrospect, they're not as awful as I thought they were then, but it's still not my best look.
In seventh grade, I tried to look both more normal and more grown up.
Don't mock the scarf. It was 1978, and men and women alike did the knotted scarf around the neck thing. This was as fashionable as I got. (OK, I once owned white, knee high boots.)
My major reaction to these was, "Geez, I'd better get those braces on my teeth soon." I believe that I referred to myself as Fang.
Here's high school, ninth and tenth grade.
See, these look pretty normal, until you consider the time period. Every other female on the planet, it seemed, had the Farrah Fawcett hairdo - big, fluffy, feathered layers. My big sister's version was less over the top than most:
I simply could not imagine having to curl and hairspray my hair every day, or having to get it trimmed every month. At 47, I still trim my own hair, maybe three times a year, and I have no layers, highlights, dyed grays or anything else that would take actual time and effort. Who wants to fuss with their hair in the morning? If I can't be done "styling" in 2 minutes, I'm grumpy.
So, while I don't have any photos of fashion faux pas, like a mullet, if you flip through my yearbook you'll see that I (unintentionally) stand out by virtue of my lack of big hair. I graduated in 1984; almost everyone either had a mullet or big hair. (It goes without saying, doesn't it, that I also never straightened my hair or gave it a "blowout"? Too much effort! What's the point?)
This is my high school senior portrait:
Yeah, it's a beat up copy. This is the copy that my dad carried in his wallet, so it's worn out and beaten up. I actually liked the photo with the big, sunny smile better, but Dad (and my best friend) liked this one. I thought that my teeth looked too chipmunky.
I was so happy that I liked the photos from my senior portrait shoot. I'd lived in fear of hating them, and was delighted that they were flattering.
The necklace I'm wearing belonged to my mom. All of her daughters wore it in their senior portraits.
I was disappointed, at the time, to wear something besides the comedy/tragedy mask necklaces that I wore every day, but I'm a sentimentalist, and tradition is a big deal to me. (My daughters have also had photos taken, as high school seniors, wearing the heart necklace.) As time goes by, I'm even happier that I wore it.
Just as a final note, did you notice anything else about my photos? If you grew up with me, you know this without my even asking. Yep, that's right - I'm wearing blue in almost every one. I think I have 3 or 4 school portraits in a color that is not blue. Ninety percent of my wardrobe was blue.
Blue makes me happy.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Apology Accepted
There are very few people in the world that I actively dislike. I tend to genuinely like, and get along well with, all kinds of people, including people who are very different from myself.
Sometimes, though, people dislike me, or I dislike them. It's an ordinary fact of life, and I don't usually get too bothered.
Partly because of my personality, and partly because teachers tend to like good students, I usually got along well with my teachers, even teachers that the other kids disliked. It was always a surprise when there was serious personality clash.
The year I was a sophomore in high school, there was serious personality clash with my math teacher. For starters, he did not understand, or like, people who didn't like math. On the twice yearly standardized tests that the district administered, I'd been scoring at "grade 12, month 9" (or high school graduate) since 7th or 8th grade in most subjects, but in math I scored "only" two years above grade level. For me, that was struggling. Math gave me a headache.
My teacher expressed the opinion - not just privately, in conferences or on my papers, but publicly, out loud in class - that I struggled with math because, "Math is a logical, precise science. You do not have a logical mind. You have an undisciplined, chaotic mind." Way to motivate, Mr. B.
He loved to tell us that, "Everything is math. Music, sports, architecture, art - it's all math. If you can't do math, you can't do anything." My strong suit, language, was apparently an undesirable gift. In English classes, I got As without even trying. In math, I knocked myself out for Bs. My teacher was unamused.
The fact that I was a theater student opened me up to more ridicule. It was particularly fierce when my drama teacher decided to produce "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The first day I walked into class with my script, without referencing me in particular - or, for that matter referencing math, the subject of the class - our math teacher delivered a lecture about the pointlessness of studying any work by an author who'd been dead for centuries.
He always called us up to see our grades on the Friday before report cards came out. It was my last required semester of math, and I didn't care too much about the grade. Still, it was painful to see a C. I had never gotten a C, in anything. I couldn't recall more than a couple of assignments that I'd gotten Cs on. I must have really tanked the final, I decided, for it to negate all the Bs and the few As I'd gotten. So, I gritted my teeth, thanked my lucky stars that I was done with math, and sat back down.
Monday came; report cards were handed out. I had an F in math.
AN F. I had never gotten an F on even a single assignment, in my entire life. I was stunned.
I went up to him after school to question it. "On Friday, you showed me your book, and it said I had a C."
I will never forget his answer. "That's what you earned, but this is what I thought you deserved."
Wow.
My mother was even more furious than I was. A brilliant woman, she was also, deeply, a pacifist. She tried not to make waves, rock the boat, upset the apple cart - whatever your stock cliche for stirring up trouble is. She believed in making nice and smoothing over and turning the other cheek. And yet, she made an appointment for herself and me with the school principal.
She explained the problem. "So, what do you want me to do?" the principal asked.
"Require him to give her the grade that she earned."
He was aghast. "I can't get involved in the grading process! I can't tell teachers what grades they can and can't give!"
Mom demanded to know what the official school, or district, policies were. She wanted to know if it was possible to get my grades from the gradebook, or my assignments, and recalculate. The only answer she got was, "Grading is up to the individual teacher. I can't get involved."
"So, there's no oversight? What are the assignments for? Why have tests? Are you telling me that a child can earn As all year, then be handed a F on a report card, just because the teacher feels like it?"
"Well, yes. I can't get involved in the grading process."
We left angrier than we were when we arrived. Mom vetoed my suggestion of complaining to someone at the district level - "It'll just be more of the same." The next year, I took a semester of one of the easiest math classes offered, just to fill my credit requirement. I thought, and said, very uncomplimentary things about both the teacher and the (now retired) principal.
My senior year, I was asked to be on the tech crew for the school's first faculty play. It's now a pretty standard practice in our area, but at the time, it was a brand new idea: have the faculty act in a play to raise money for scholarships. The students would be the crew, since we already know what to do.
My old math teacher, Mr. B, was in the play.
I could not get over the irony. After all the hours I'd had to listen to him say things like, "I don't know why the school even has a fine arts department. We're supposed to be in the business of education," now he was acting?
Still, I'm polite. I treated him as though there was no bad blood between us. Actually, I treated him as if I'd never met him before. I was polite, I was informative and helpful when I needed to be, but I was not friendly. I was one of those kids who got along well with teachers, so with some, there was joking and laughter, almost as if they were my peers. Not with Mr. B. If you didn't know either of us, I don't think you would have noticed anything amiss. (Maybe I'm kidding myself, and I was glaring daggers, but I don't think so.) He never brought up the fact that he knew me before we were introduced at rehearsals. The distant-but-cordial thing worked for me.
One day, as we neared the performance dates, he walked up and stood next to me as I watched the action onstage. He didn't look at me; he looked straight ahead at the show. I wondered why he'd chosen that spot to stand in, but I said nothing. It's a free country; the man could stand wherever he chose.
We never made small talk - anything we'd said to each other had been show related. Now, after standing there for a few minutes, he said, while still staring straight ahead, "I can see why you like this - this sort of thing."
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I briefly considered snapping something like, "About darned time," but I didn't. Also looking straight ahead, I said, in a conversational tone, "It's a lot of fun, isn't it?"
"Yes. It is." He stayed there for another few seconds, then nodded, still looking out at the stage, and walked away.
Message received. I knew that had been an apology. I also knew that it must have been agonizing for him to say anything. He didn't have to. It must have been a very difficult thing to do. From his nod, it seemed that the corresponding answer had also been received - apology accepted.
When I told one of my best friends (one who knew the backstory), she was furious. "That's not good enough! If he wants to apologize, he needs to look you in the eye and actually apologize!"
"No, he doesn't. He didn't have to say anything." Two years' worth of my anger was erased.
As I got older, and learned more about psychology and gender differences, I learned that most women are not OK with typically male communication like that - no eye contact, no mention of the actual subject at hand - but I knew what it must have cost him, dignity-wise, to even attempt to say such a thing, and to a student, no less. It was as good as it was ever going to get, and it was good enough for me.
I did hope that, maybe, he'd be a little less harsh the next time a linguistically competent, number challenged student landed in his class. Maybe, now, he'd be less scathing. I sincerely hoped that he'd never again fail a student because of a personality clash. I have no way of knowing if he did or not, but I like to think that he changed a bit. Even teachers are in school to learn.
After that, he got the same smiles, the same "break a leg," even some of the joking that I gave the other teachers in the cast. I could be wrong, but it seemed to make him happy.
Even a little sincere apology goes a long way.
Sometimes, though, people dislike me, or I dislike them. It's an ordinary fact of life, and I don't usually get too bothered.
Partly because of my personality, and partly because teachers tend to like good students, I usually got along well with my teachers, even teachers that the other kids disliked. It was always a surprise when there was serious personality clash.
The year I was a sophomore in high school, there was serious personality clash with my math teacher. For starters, he did not understand, or like, people who didn't like math. On the twice yearly standardized tests that the district administered, I'd been scoring at "grade 12, month 9" (or high school graduate) since 7th or 8th grade in most subjects, but in math I scored "only" two years above grade level. For me, that was struggling. Math gave me a headache.
My teacher expressed the opinion - not just privately, in conferences or on my papers, but publicly, out loud in class - that I struggled with math because, "Math is a logical, precise science. You do not have a logical mind. You have an undisciplined, chaotic mind." Way to motivate, Mr. B.
He loved to tell us that, "Everything is math. Music, sports, architecture, art - it's all math. If you can't do math, you can't do anything." My strong suit, language, was apparently an undesirable gift. In English classes, I got As without even trying. In math, I knocked myself out for Bs. My teacher was unamused.
The fact that I was a theater student opened me up to more ridicule. It was particularly fierce when my drama teacher decided to produce "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The first day I walked into class with my script, without referencing me in particular - or, for that matter referencing math, the subject of the class - our math teacher delivered a lecture about the pointlessness of studying any work by an author who'd been dead for centuries.
He always called us up to see our grades on the Friday before report cards came out. It was my last required semester of math, and I didn't care too much about the grade. Still, it was painful to see a C. I had never gotten a C, in anything. I couldn't recall more than a couple of assignments that I'd gotten Cs on. I must have really tanked the final, I decided, for it to negate all the Bs and the few As I'd gotten. So, I gritted my teeth, thanked my lucky stars that I was done with math, and sat back down.
Monday came; report cards were handed out. I had an F in math.
AN F. I had never gotten an F on even a single assignment, in my entire life. I was stunned.
I went up to him after school to question it. "On Friday, you showed me your book, and it said I had a C."
I will never forget his answer. "That's what you earned, but this is what I thought you deserved."
Wow.
My mother was even more furious than I was. A brilliant woman, she was also, deeply, a pacifist. She tried not to make waves, rock the boat, upset the apple cart - whatever your stock cliche for stirring up trouble is. She believed in making nice and smoothing over and turning the other cheek. And yet, she made an appointment for herself and me with the school principal.
She explained the problem. "So, what do you want me to do?" the principal asked.
"Require him to give her the grade that she earned."
He was aghast. "I can't get involved in the grading process! I can't tell teachers what grades they can and can't give!"
Mom demanded to know what the official school, or district, policies were. She wanted to know if it was possible to get my grades from the gradebook, or my assignments, and recalculate. The only answer she got was, "Grading is up to the individual teacher. I can't get involved."
"So, there's no oversight? What are the assignments for? Why have tests? Are you telling me that a child can earn As all year, then be handed a F on a report card, just because the teacher feels like it?"
"Well, yes. I can't get involved in the grading process."
We left angrier than we were when we arrived. Mom vetoed my suggestion of complaining to someone at the district level - "It'll just be more of the same." The next year, I took a semester of one of the easiest math classes offered, just to fill my credit requirement. I thought, and said, very uncomplimentary things about both the teacher and the (now retired) principal.
My senior year, I was asked to be on the tech crew for the school's first faculty play. It's now a pretty standard practice in our area, but at the time, it was a brand new idea: have the faculty act in a play to raise money for scholarships. The students would be the crew, since we already know what to do.
My old math teacher, Mr. B, was in the play.
I could not get over the irony. After all the hours I'd had to listen to him say things like, "I don't know why the school even has a fine arts department. We're supposed to be in the business of education," now he was acting?
Still, I'm polite. I treated him as though there was no bad blood between us. Actually, I treated him as if I'd never met him before. I was polite, I was informative and helpful when I needed to be, but I was not friendly. I was one of those kids who got along well with teachers, so with some, there was joking and laughter, almost as if they were my peers. Not with Mr. B. If you didn't know either of us, I don't think you would have noticed anything amiss. (Maybe I'm kidding myself, and I was glaring daggers, but I don't think so.) He never brought up the fact that he knew me before we were introduced at rehearsals. The distant-but-cordial thing worked for me.
One day, as we neared the performance dates, he walked up and stood next to me as I watched the action onstage. He didn't look at me; he looked straight ahead at the show. I wondered why he'd chosen that spot to stand in, but I said nothing. It's a free country; the man could stand wherever he chose.
We never made small talk - anything we'd said to each other had been show related. Now, after standing there for a few minutes, he said, while still staring straight ahead, "I can see why you like this - this sort of thing."
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I briefly considered snapping something like, "About darned time," but I didn't. Also looking straight ahead, I said, in a conversational tone, "It's a lot of fun, isn't it?"
"Yes. It is." He stayed there for another few seconds, then nodded, still looking out at the stage, and walked away.
Message received. I knew that had been an apology. I also knew that it must have been agonizing for him to say anything. He didn't have to. It must have been a very difficult thing to do. From his nod, it seemed that the corresponding answer had also been received - apology accepted.
When I told one of my best friends (one who knew the backstory), she was furious. "That's not good enough! If he wants to apologize, he needs to look you in the eye and actually apologize!"
"No, he doesn't. He didn't have to say anything." Two years' worth of my anger was erased.
As I got older, and learned more about psychology and gender differences, I learned that most women are not OK with typically male communication like that - no eye contact, no mention of the actual subject at hand - but I knew what it must have cost him, dignity-wise, to even attempt to say such a thing, and to a student, no less. It was as good as it was ever going to get, and it was good enough for me.
I did hope that, maybe, he'd be a little less harsh the next time a linguistically competent, number challenged student landed in his class. Maybe, now, he'd be less scathing. I sincerely hoped that he'd never again fail a student because of a personality clash. I have no way of knowing if he did or not, but I like to think that he changed a bit. Even teachers are in school to learn.
After that, he got the same smiles, the same "break a leg," even some of the joking that I gave the other teachers in the cast. I could be wrong, but it seemed to make him happy.
Even a little sincere apology goes a long way.
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