Last night's entry from Doug in Denver, The Wondering Jew, coupled with Al's question for yesterday on The Journals mailing list, made me think about the teachers who inspired me to greatness. Heh. There are none. Yep, absolutely none. I got through twelve years of public school with absolutely *no* inspirational teachers. Yeah, there were some, I'm sure, that I liked. And some that I admired... but none that inspired. In fact, out of the maybe 70 teachers that I had, I can only remember about five names. And three of those are of teachers that I hated, for some reason or another. I don't really know what to say about that. Maybe I was just a late bloomer, or something. One of the teachers in junior high taught me the importance of sentence structure. I remember the thrill of learning subject/verb/predicate/modifier and drawing the sentence structure on the blackboard. Most of the time, when I was called to the board, it was merely to serve as a bad example, I think. On the other hand, I don't think that I was a very good student. I only really started to shine when I was in high school, in trade school, in fact. I took two years of photography in hight school, and I made straight A s all the way in that class. And then, in x-ray school, I really hit my pace. When I graduated and took my registry exam in 1966, I got the highest score ever achieved by a Kansan up until then. That only lasted about ten years, when a kid that I taught did better. Since then I've lost track of the scores, since I now know that the scores are pretty meaningless after a certain point. To me, that point is about 90%... but to the registry, it's 75%. Anyhoo... back to the HS days. My photography teacher was John Blevins, who was a pretty cool guy. He appreciated my scholarship, but he really hated teaching... 'cause most of the kids looked upon photography as a way to get out of *real* schoolwork. John taught me many things... the scientific method, mostly. And art... the composition and balance of things. But John didn't really want to be there. He was a product of the military, and he was an Air Force photographer. And a damned good one. Putting up with people who didn't want to learn? He could care less. At the time, there was a lot associated with photography... the actual chemistry was an important part of it. The silver did stuff when exposed to light, and you took advantage of that by doing things to the silver on the film. If you didn't know exactly how the silver reacted, and why, your fancy arranging and composition were absolutely meaningless. Science. So... I graduated, and I took a job in a filling station. Someone told me (and I have no idea who or when or what the circumstances were) that I should apply for x-ray school. 'cause x-ray people used chemistry, and i was good at that. So I did. And Earle McRae came into my life. He was running the X-ray school at St Francis hospital, and he wanted me to come there and study. Well, what the hell, I did. About the same time, Tom Rogers, a friend of my parents, kinda said that he could send me, or at least help me, in medical school. I remember telling him that I would learn x-ray and then think about it. Earle was a mentor, in a way, in that I admired him, and he was an inspiration to me. However, I soon surpassed him in my knowledge of our field. Earle was more of a politician than anything else, and I was more of a... I dunno. A scholar, maybe. He used knowledge to gain advantage of situations, and I used it mostly to just have it... it was a satisfaction to me in itself. And to this day, I look upon the accumulation of knowledge as a very personal thing. I don't need to know any more than I do to do my job, but I am constantly learning new stuff... 'cause it's really fun. I do the thrice-weekly radiology stumpers because it's fun, and I enjoy learning... and I usually do pretty well at them, better than the average G.P., anyway. OK, enough of that. Karen is home! And I am so happy about that! She came home a day early because she missed me. She and Debbie had a great time, and Karen came home with all kinds of ideas on rearranging and fixing up this house... more on this later, heh. Much more. O'yeah... work. Work was hard. And "they've" decided that we need to work harder. As in, they're going to schedule exams on the "Z" throughout the day. Essentially, they want us to do twice as much work as we're doing now. With, of course, the same number of people. I've pretty much decided that I'll turn in my resignation then, and go back to doing x-ray work. Our patient care is pretty close to the edge now, and I will not do less for my patients than they need. Karen and I spent some time out on the deck after she got home, and it was thundering and sprinkling a bit... but it all went west of us this time. This has been the driest July ever for Topeka, less than 1/4" of wet here. As usual, I shall retire now, being verily tard.