13

Teachers

As the first weeks went by, the personalities of our teachers became as fixed as stars and as dependable in their eccentricities as the postures of marble statues. Mr. Thorpe shouted and bullied; Mr. Fitz-Hallan charmed; Mr. Whipple, incapable of inspiring either terror or love, wavered between trying to inspire both and so was despised. Mr. Weatherbee revealed himself to be a natural teacher, and led us in masterful fashion through the first steps of algebra. (Dave Brick surprisingly turned out to be a mathematical whiz, and took to wearing an ostentatious slide rule in a leather holster clipped to his belt.) Thorpe could freeze your stomach and your mind; Fitz-Hallan, whose family was wealthy, turned his salary back to the school, and doing so, earned the privilege of teaching 'what he liked - the Grimms' Household Tales, the Odyssey, Great Expectations and Huckleberry Finn, and E. B. White for style; Whipple was so lazy that he took great chunks of class time to read aloud from the textbook. His only real interest was in sports, where he functioned as Ridpath's assistant.

Their lives out of the school were unimaginable to us; at dances, we saw wives, but could never truly believe in them. Their houses likewise were mysterious, as if they, like us, had not spouses but parents, and so much homework that their true homes were the old building, the modern addition, and the field house.