365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

31. The Professor

31. The Professor: Write about a teacher that has influenced you.

When I was in first grade, my teacher was a lady with the unfortunate last name of Hurlbut. I was only six then, so I didn't know how bad such a name was. My older brother, a much more world-wise second grader, informed me that the name essentially meant she was throwing up out of her rear end.

If Mrs. Hurlbut hadn't been the nicest and also the prettiest teacher in school, she would have been the brunt of many jokes. She was anyway, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

I was the little girl who loved her teachers. Basically, I was a suck up. In return, the teachers loved me. I had a good relationship with Mrs. Hurlbut. When it came time for my birthday, I invited her to the party. It was to be at Chuck-E-Cheese, which was the place to be when you're six. Every kids dream, really. I was extremely excited, and talked incessantly of the big day.

Mrs. Hurlbut must have sensed that this was important to me, because she actually showed up. I'm pretty sure that I was the only student in that class whose birthday she went to, mostly because I went to everyone else's parties and I never saw her there.

She didn't stay long, but I still have this mental image of her sitting with my mom in a booth with a half-eaten pizza on the table, my pretty teacher who had a warm and loving heart. I never really felt sorry for Mrs. Hurlbut because of her last name. In our innocent little first grade class, no one ever made fun of her for it, though I know the older kids in the school did sometimes. I just liked her.

When the party was over, the cake had been cut, prizes had been redeemed, and presents opened, we drove home. Mom was telling Dad in the front seat about her conversation with my teacher. It had been about her last name, and it was as Mom was talking that I realized how bad Mrs. Hurlbut's last name was, and how much it must cause her trouble.

Apparently she married into it. The one clear detail I remember from my birthday, besides Mrs. Hurlbut and my mom in that booth, was Mom relating to my dad afterward, "She said it was a terrible last name, but that she loved her husband so much she didn't care."

That stayed with me. It's still with me even now. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's just one of those comments that you grab hold of and keep. I don't know.

I do know, however, that it affected me. I had never before considered that you could love a boy so much that you could ignore something bad that came with them. Or maybe ignore is the wrong word. Accept would be the better term.

Even at that tender young age I liked boys, but I always liked the cute ones with no discernable bad thing to them. Mrs. Hurlbut taught me that love does something. It has power to overcome bad.

I think about the saying "I'm stealing your last name" that engaged couples use. And I know that I won't ever marry a boy unless I can prove to myself that I love him as much as Mrs. Hurlbut did hers.