Goodbye, Amber

We were all seniors taking our last required theology class: The Basics to Christian Living. The class was about absolutely nothing and I remember a lecture about student loans and STDs. We journaled a lot about our lives and our futures and I made a point of having the most creative binder. I had raided the Sunday school art supplies at church and I had at least 16 different colored pages. We had to do presentations on something. Our lives maybe? Mary Number One gave a presentation on how her parents met. Her dad was a Catholic priest, her mother a nun. Needless to say they both left the ministry.

Our teacher was new, just that semester, and we liked her. She wasn't hardened to our ways yet and she would let us get away with untucked uniform shirts. She made the class less about theology and more about "life." We liked that. She liked us too. Maybe too much. Her sexual orientation was unclear and my gaydar was just as weak then as it is now.

Six weeks from the end of the semester she disappeared. Mr. Schmidt, the ugliest, smarmiest theology teacher ever to set foot in a classroom, announced to us that she was gone and Johnnie New Shoes was going to be finishing off the semester.

I don't remember his real name but Johnnie was fresh out of college and less than five years older than most of us. Johnnie had been hired for the fall semester to teach theology to the freshmen (again, by theology, I mean binders) but they had arranged an emergency early hire to save us from ourselves and to teach us all about Christian living.

Needless to say, he was terrified of us. Thirty feminist 18-year-olds with plaid uniform skirts, no manners, and complete disdain for faculty. Why he thought it would be a good idea to start out teaching at a Catholic all-girls school is beyond me. We ran him over, turned in our binders and got our diplomas.

That's my last memory of a teacher leaving.

This morning, our Health and Wellness professor, Just-Call-Me-Amber-Even-Though-I-Have-Two-Doctorates, shared with us that she was leaving. Leaving now, in the middle of the semester. Leaving us to find wellness on our own.

She said she wasn't well enough to stay so I guess it's best she left but I'll really miss her and now I won't know who to ask about eating raw.

The new lady, Just-Call-Me-Wendy-P.S.-My-Man-Calves-Could-Tread- Water-In-The-Open-Sea-For-A-Week seems nice enough. I had her for water aerobics, a class I took for three weeks when I was an underclassmen. I guess she's healthy and well.

I guess you can never tell.