What Goes Around Comes Around

I was the faculty advisor for the yearbook class. That means I was the teacher and responsible for making sure that the book was completed and ready to be passed out during the last week. It was a fun class. We had a great darkroom which was necessary for yearbook production prior to digital photography. We met during the lunch hours. We had three lunches, one after another. That enabled the students to go to lunch and still have someone there during all lunches to help sell the yearbooks. The Yearbook staff was also responsible for making activity cards during the lunch times.

One year, as it was getting time to distribute the books, each of the yearbook students were given an excuse slip to miss the whole day to get ready to pass out the books. This was how we were able to get the books to the right tables that were set out with each letter of the alphabet so the students would know where to go to get their books.

One of the teachers refused to let one of the yearbook students out of class for this time. He told the student that his history class was more important than passing out yearbooks. It was kind of a funny but interesting that I had just found an old note that teacher had sent me when he was the wrestling coach. He wanted one of the students in my history class to miss my class to go to the gym to sweat and spit in a cup to lose weight so he could make his weight to wrestle. The note said that he was going to have to get under one of the wrestling mats and it would be very hot for him. I read the note and allowed him to go.

This is representative of not only wrestlers but also Coach A and Coach B 

I wrote a note to the teacher saying the staff had permission from the administration to work on the yearbook that day. He was not happy he had to let the student go. He made copies of the note I had sent and gave it to some of the teachers and asked the principal to not let the students out. Of course, they needed out because they were the only ones that could take care of the twelve hundred books. I was called down to the principal’s office to meet with him and a couple other teachers who also objected to any student being out the last week of school. I went to the office and took the note I had found a couple of days earlier in cleaning out a filing cabinet.

As I got to the office, I just handed the wrestling coach the note and asked him if he remembered writing it. He did, and as we walked into the principal’s office, he said that there was no need for a meeting, he had decided that I would need his student to help with the yearbooks. He just smiled at me and walked back down the hall.

Sometimes all teachers get a little out of sorts. I not sure, but it seems like the coaches often had a lot of tension around them. There were two coaches (not the wrestling coach) at Orem High that seemed to always have a running battle. There are a number of stories. I will just touch on two or three. One of the coaches, Coach A, required that the team members wear certain socks when they competed. To help them out, he had a whole box of socks to sell to the athletes. It was a money-making project for his particular team. Coach B said that wasn’t right because the school had purchased socks for all the athletes to buy. The principal determined Coach A couldn’t sell socks to school students or on school grounds. This really made Coach A angry, but there was nothing he could do about it. To get even with Coach B, he waited until Coach B was in the bathroom and then turned off all the lights in the gym and offices, which included the showers.

The next interaction between them, as far as I know, was on back-to-school night. Coach B had a garage-size storage area in back of the gym, but instead of using it for storage, he had turned it into a sweet little man cave. It had a couch, armchair, refrigerator, and a TV.  We were to start the back-to-school activity at about six o’clock. He had gone into his little cave and was resting after school. Coach A came along and put a padlock on the outside of the door and then went into the back-to-school activity. When Coach B, that was locked in, couldn’t get out or get to the meetings, he started calling for help. He missed over half of the back-to-school night. The principal was livid. Someone finally told him where the errant coach was, and he went to let him out. The lock on the door was a regular school padlock. The principal was not aware that Coach B had made himself a man cave, and he was told to dismantle it and that the custodians were looking for a place to keep the tractor.

I want to write one more story about these coaches. On a very cold night Coach A had taken the school van with the girls’ basketball team to a game. This was when teachers could take students all the way home instead of dropping them off at the school. On the way back Coach A arrived at Coach B’s house to let Coach B’s daughter off. It was the last stop, and the van wouldn’t start again. Coach A asked the girl to ask her dad for a ride home. Her dad said no. He asked if he could come in and get warm, and Coach B said no. Coach A then asked if he could use the phone; again, B said no. Finally, Coach B let his daughter make a call for Coach A. She called me, and I went to get him. He was standing out in the cold.