| 02/07/09 09:29 AM |
#8
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Davis Barker
Almost 25 Thoughts in Passing (no pun intended, yet) .....
I think I recall that Carrol had an overwhelming fear of frogs ….. but for the life of me I can’t remember why.
At this point in life, I can’t remember any more whether I went to college at Sam Houston or with Sam Houston.
As of yet, I have never attended a high school reunion ….. for the first one I got this questionnaire that said, “Name all the exciting things you have done and all the exciting places you have been.” I couldn’t think of any, so I never went. And after all these years, I still can’t think of any.
After teaching for over thirty years, I am still amazed at how little I actually know about how the brain works in adolescents.
Before my mother died in 2000, I pretty much told her every lie that I had ever told her growing up ….. except one ….. what happened to the bottle of Cutty Sark in the pantry ….. ask Strickland, it was his fault. It was his idea to refill the bottle with water.
I spent four years as a police officer before becoming a teacher/coach ….. it’s always kind of scared me that it wasn’t as big a transition as one might think.
Over the years my wife and kids always wanted to go to the beach every summer ….. and they never understood why it was really not that big deal to me …. been there, done that, moved on. Sand in the brain you know.
When I was coaching high school baseball at this one particular place, one of the perks was getting bleacher season tickets to the Astrodome. However, I got mine revoked one night when I dropped my beverage on a particular outfielder’s head while I was trying to catch a homerun ball. When I slurredly questioned their logic of such a decision they asked me not to ever return. I didn’t …. but how would they know?
In thirty-two years as an educator (inflated term), I have worked in six different school districts - 5 the first 16 and one the last 16. During that time, I have worked for fourteen different superintendents, seventeen different principals, and six different head coaches. As a result, my motto has always been “if your boss doesn’t like you, don’t worry about it cause you’ll have another one pretty quick.”
The toughest thing I have ever had to do is bury Linda, my wife of thirty years …. unfortunately, a broken heart still beats and the sun still comes up the next morning. And although I tried hard for awhile, I never once found her in the bottom of an empty bottle.
I wish I had all of Dee Allen’s drawings that he turned in as assignments (instead of proofs) in Coach Furney’s Geometry class …. they must have been good because he always had a better grade than I did. How knows, maybe they were geometrical drawings.
One of my great disappointments in life is that the powers to be did not allow our ballot-stuffing selection of Woodpeckers stand as mascot of Brazoswood High School. Brazoswood Woodpeckers still has a kind of ring to me.
Weddell was the best head coach I every worked for …. but I would never tell him that. He and I were always pretty close …. after all, in football, look where I had to put my hands before every snap ….. that’s why so many teams run the shotgun today …. it’s more sanitary. If Alan still has his original hair and hair color after coaching as long as he did it’s because I got stretch marks from carrying him.
I planned on being retired by now, but my wife Debbie quit her job as branch manager of a bank to go into real estate. Gee, what a timely decision. Anyone out there looking to relocate to the heart of East Texas and buy a house? I can send business cards!
After years of coaching and teaching, I look back on the coaching staff, the faculty, and the administrators that we had in BISD and feel really blessed. I’m glad they are still finding ways to honor those people. Trust me folks, I’ve worked with some real Lu-Lu’s out there.
I never got to skip school in high school because my mother was the principal’s secretary. I guess that’s why I tried to make up for it when I got to college. I cut so many classes that the dean and I operated on a first name basis. But because of my habits, I did get to brag to my kids that I was often on the Dean’s List. Which one, I don’t elaborate …. but I did come to know and learn what Sco-Pro stood for.
My two kids apparently weren’t paying much attention as they were growing up ….. they both entered education, too.
More than once I was eventually asked to leave an “all you can eat” joint when in the company of several coaches at coaching school ….. ask Weddell, some of it was his fault. It’s hard to carry on a conversion at the supper table when you are having to talk around a three-foot high pile of stripped rib bones and someone just used the last clean napkin in the whole place.
One of the fondest memories I have in coaching is having the opportunity to coach my own son. However, considering how much I stayed on his case all the time, my fondest memory and his fondest memory may be a little different.
They used to make fun of me in athletics because I ran so slow. They should note that currently I have lost very little in terms of speed. But, of course, if I had slowed down very much I would be running backwards. There are some advantages to being slow. In college, when we did sprints I held up the workouts when I ran with the backs. After a couple of weeks, I was reassigned to run sprints with the lineman. It worked out better for everybody.
I once coached at a small East Texas town that had its own set of rules. It was the only place I have ever been that served beer and mixed drinks in the high school auditorium at the Monday night booster club meeting.
I still have my favorite saying in a frame on the wall: “God made an ice pick for every basketball” ….. however, recently I have added soccer to that short list. Spoken like a true football coach.
I once received a plaque for district teacher of the year (well, it was a very small district and there was not much competition). When I got the plaque home I discovered they had misspelled my name. Either it’s tough having two last names or I really didn’t make all that much of an impression. And no, I never told them about the mistake, I just stuck it in a drawer.
After making the playoffs for several years in a row, I went in after the season to talk to the superintendent about a raise. He told me that money was tight in next year’s budget, but he promised there would “be a raise down the road in the near future.” I thanked him and left. When I got into my truck to leave, it hit me what he had said. So the next week I resigned and did what he said - I went “down the road” and got a raise.
Never was good at math.
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