• Back in the second semester of my Senior year of high school, I had this amazing English and Creative Writing teacher. We'll call him Mr. Green. Mr. Green always had this very sarcastic, stoic, seemingly cold attitude. But that was why everyone loved him. I had him for my first two classes of the day back-to-back, and I never minded it in the slightest. It was because of that that we got to know each other so well.

    He was a HUGE Spider Man fan, with his entire room decorated to the brim with Spider Man things. He had a poster board cutout, a few posters, pencils, pens, markers, comic books, anything you could think of! He even had a Spider Man teddy bear he kept in a "cabinet" in the back of the room. At some point during the year, I had lost my good pink eraser so I was using an old Christmas reindeer eraser instead. He noticed it one day and asked me what I was doing with a reindeer eraser. He didn't even wait for a reply before taking his prized Venom eraser, breaking off a big chunk of it, and giving it to me. (Here's a fun fact: he never owned a Spider Man eraser, only Spider Man writing utensils - because Spider Man creates and Venom destroys.)

    We always played so many interesting games and learned in interactive ways. I remember one day we were asked to go outside and write 12 very short poems on anything you could observe outside, and they all had to be different. I also remember how when we were studying Shakespeare's Macbeth in English how we had to read the script aloud as a class and for the last scene we had a SWORDFIGHT in the middle of the classroom! And I got to fight him and "skewer" the Spider Man bear on my sword and parade it around as Macduff!

    Honestly, if it wasn't for me being in his Creative Writing and English classes I wouldn't be an English major right now. He reminded me in just a short semester of high school how much writing, English, and literature all meant to me when I had forgotten about it. He inspired me to create, and to show others what I create. He proved to me that I don't need to write what others tell me, that despite anything I can create entire universes with just the stroke of a keyboard, the grip of a pencil, anything. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't be writing this right now, because I would have no will or desire to write.

    The worst part of it all is that after saying a very brief goodbye on the last day of high school and walking out of his classroom, I was not aware that that was the last time I would probably ever see him. I never saw him at graduation. I never got to hug him and thank him for renewing this passion in me. I never got to tell him how happy his classes made me and how they made my days in that hellhole of a school bearable. I just wish I would have transferred there sooner and had the privilege of taking his classes as a Freshman and beyond. That is my only regret.

    So, wherever Mr Green is right now, I just hope that he knows that he gave a kid something that they will remember, cherish, and carry with them for the rest of their life.