a note on bob

i want to talk about the current highlight of my week. but first...

let me take a moment to tell you about bob. bob is my boss. bob is the head of the social studies department. bob has been teaching here for thirty-five years. bob is an intellectual elitist with political beliefs that would fit in well with the hippie movement. bob teaches psychology, debate, and current affairs. bob is an amazing teacher. bob is from ohio. bob is very mellow. bob says everything in a dry, sarcastic manner. bob is one of the funniest people i know.

bob is also unaware that it is no longer 1982.

walking into his classroom is like taking a trip in a time machine. when we study life during the 80s, i tell my students to go walk through bob's classroom. he has the only room with yellow walls, because he has refused to allow the school to paint them. he still has the same bright orange shag carpeting patched with duct tape that he had when he taught my parents in the seventies. he is in possession of the only remaining set of wooden desks, which are covered in carvings drawn twenty-five years ago. the walls are papered in advertisements from magazines that were published during the reagan administration. everywhere you look you see pictures of linebacker shoulder pads, crown victorias, and dynasty clothes. the textbook he uses doesn't have the last state test history goal, because the events which are covered by the last goal hadn't occured yet when it was published. and the last goal starts with richard nixon. his bookshelf is still decorated with mondale/ferraro bumper stickers. every morning the social studies hall hears the sounds of 70s rock and folk music drifting down the hallway.

which brings us to the highlight of the week. this morning, as i was rushing to copy western settlement charts, what did i hear blasting from his 1987 new yorker cartoon-emblazoned doorway? "i believe in a thing called love" by the darkness.


and it made me happy.