POSTS
Mr. Crippin
By hisham
Mr. Crippin had a deservedly wicked name. He walked into class with calculated, military-precision steps that he himself never faltered to observe every morning. He’d focus on his own brown leather shoes as he walked in front of the whiteboard.
“Children,” he said, raising his head, “the homework tray seems to be filled up nicely today. I expect each and everyone of you to have done a job that would not have me furious this time tomorrow.”
He was barely taller than us, yet his extra two inches made all the difference to third graders. Add to that blondish side-combed hair, a weighty mustache that spelled nothing short of strict, and gleaming gray marbles for eyes.
We never could tell were Mr. Crippin was from. His unaccented English deluded all of us. At one point, he did say he was Welsh. Then he said he was British. By year end, he was either American or Canadian. I could never recall what the reason was for his ambiguous origins.
All sorts of theories were put up about Mr. Crippin. He murdered his neighbor and fled the country…he’s an alien…he’s Crippinface, a ghoul…he’s…and he’s to no end. __
Yet we could never come to grips with the fact that Mr. Crippin could be the nicest man on earth at interspersed times throughout the year in which he taught us.
_Mr. Crippin added a gold star to my sticker book…Mr. Crippin said I did real good…Mr. Crippin said I should skip a grade…_and so on.
I don’t know what became of Mr. Crippin. It’s been twenty years since that day when I last saw him before summer vacation.
“Young man, you keep at it and you’ll rise to the stars. Aim high, always,” he said to me.
Throughout third grade, that was the only nice thing he ever told me. I remember it to this day as I sit here in my office writing a little diatribe about a certain teacher that scared us a little, that encouraged us a little, and that–most of all, believed in us before we were old enough to believe in ourselves.