New Thing 86, New Thing Every Day: Write a letter to an elementary or high school teacher who influenced me and thank them

I was fortunate to have a fairly large number of teachers who influenced me and helped me be a happier, hopefully better person. At the top of the list is Marvin Denison, primarily a teacher of history. I wrote him a letter tonight to tell him that.

Here are 10 things about my time with high school teacher Marvin Denison.

1. Mr. Denison taught history, a subject I hated until we met. In large part thanks to him, I later got a degree in American history and today I read lots of history books, for fun, each year.
2. Mr Denison treated me with respect, like an adult, even when I did not deserve it.
3. I was a kid who got in trouble a lot, and he was always cool about it, even when punishing me.
4. Later, Mr. Denison went from primarily being a teacher to being headmaster of my school.
5. He was officially the one who suspended me, for accumulation of demerits, after I told a teacher to f___ herself.
6. My senior year, our basketball team missed winning the state championships, largely because of bad calls and we felt sure we were cheated. I was editor of the school newspaper and Mr. Denison charged me with writing an article that properly captured the moment. I do not think I did a very good job.
7. Senior year, he taught an American history class that debunked many of the myths with which we all grow up. It was incredibly cool.
8. One of my best friends, Adam, and I got in an actual fight in that history class one day. It was kind of a big deal that freaked everyone out. At the same time, it put on painful display just exactly how embarrassing I was as a fighter.
9. As a result of the fight, Adam and I lost the privilege to drive or leave school for lunch. We also had to do a bunch of manual labor in the woods by the school; Adam got us out of that by getting horribly attacked by thousands of mosquitoes. Mr. Denison felt so sorry for Adam that he let us both off without further work punishment.
10. When I showed up to walk the graduation line in bright yellow high tops -- rules were stricter in 1988 -- it was Mr. Denison who overruled math teacher Linda Radford, who wanted to make me sit out graduation, and let me walk the line to get my diploma.