kartooner

When I decided to recon­nect with my High School World Cul­tures teacher, Mr. Whelchel, there was mild con­tent­ment that what­ever he chose to do, either reply to my mes­sage or not, that after 8 years of devel­op­ing myself (since that time), I know had the oppor­tu­nity to express my grat­i­tude to some­one who left a impres­sion on my youth.

I never expected that he’d be on Myspace — of all places — and while at first it seemed strange to use a ser­vice that was orig­i­nally intended to net­work with friends and express one­self, that didn’t pre­vent from finally mak­ing con­tact after so many years.

My mes­sage was short and sweet, much like his response. Yet, I find that the older I get, the less I have to say, the better.

The fol­low­ing is my mes­sage to my for­mer World Cul­tures teacher, fol­lowed by his response which I believe is short, con­cise, and sweet in its prose:

My Mes­sage

Hey Mr. Whelchel,

It’s been 8 years, or close to it. Not sure if you remem­ber me and hey, that’s okay if you don’t con­sid­er­ing the vast amount of stu­dents you’ve taught over the years, but..

It’s Erik Sagen. I was in your class sev­eral years ago, loved it more than you’ll ever know (and that’s say­ing some­thing) and often reflect on the expe­ri­ence of high school.

My friend Adam and I worked on a class project wherein we com­bined the sound­track of Brave­heart with the graph­ics from a com­puter game (Doom) to tell the story of Napoleon Bona­parte. It was sub­mit­ted on a VHS tape and I believe we received an A, or better.

Let me know if you might remember.

Oth­er­wise, hey, I remem­ber being there and was ecsta­tic to find you on here.

Just wanted to know that you made an enor­mous impres­sion on me then.

Take care,
Erik

Whelchel’s Response

Yeah, I do remem­ber you. First of all, teach­ers are weird crea­tures. Think about it, we go to a place with hor­mone rav­aged teenagers all the while with some crazy idea that we can retard their think­ing into, well, think­ing. With all of this, we do tend to remem­ber most if not all of our students.

Thanks for the kind words, these are the fringe ben­e­fits of the job.

I am glad to see you doing well. I jumped into your page and noticed you are mak­ing a liv­ing off of your imag­i­na­tion. Great for you and I wish you all the luck in the world. The yel­low trans­former was cool.

I offer only one piece of advice; love your kids and enjoy them. They grow up way too fast. I have one in eigth grade already and he is seem­ingly a wastoid teenager (mom and dad aren’t cool anymore).

Have a great day and do what you gotta do, what ever the hell that means. ciao.