For some early context, I didn't like reading. I do now, but I hated it then. I also at that point wasn't really a writer. I don't consider myself a great writer - other than the fact that I took the SAT when it was out of 2400 and that extra 800 was writing. Why did I get an 800 in writing? Mrs. D.
Her name is Amanda Duchossois, and she was a brilliant teacher. She was also cute and all that - we'll get to that stuff. But her main important attribute to this story and this world is she was a damn good teacher for AP Lang. She took someone who hated to read and realistically never wrote and turned them into someone that has written a blog for 17 years. Yes, it helped that weirdly AP Lang was more about short stories than prior Language Arts classes (save for Catch 22, maybe my favorite book ever). But what got me into it was her teaching. I want to be clear - I liked her teaching style and took the clsas before I realize I had a hopeless crush.
Mrs. D was perfect - spunky, smart and classically pretty. Blond, short, perfect build and an amazing personality. She won best personality a few times in the years preceding me taking her class. Well deserved. She also won best dressed twice, which was a de-facto "most attractive" award, and also well deserved. She was everything. She made reading and writing sexy. She made it all work. Her class somehow quickly became my favorite. I shoudl repeat, I was a poor Langauage Arts student, relatively., before taking her class in AP Lang. She turned me into someone who easily got a 5 on the AP Lang exam, got a 800 on the Writing SAT, and who still writes to this day.
It was only the second half of that year I realized that I was fully in love (for a high schooler) with this woman. I decided not to take AP Lit my senior year which was the natural progression, but was taught by that witch Mrs. Gray (my Freshman year Honors teacher who was 85 and a crow). Instaed, I went out of my way to take Mrs. D's honors class called Rebellion and Conformity - knowing by that point that she was pregant (her first kid) and would leave aroudn Christmas. I didn't care - I was absolutely smitten, and somehow found her even more alluring pregnant.
I wasn't alone. I will absolutely say everyone who took her class who was a red blooeded male was similarly infatuated. By the way, she wasn't Pam Anderson or something - she was fairly normal by like measurement standards. But she had this amazing personality, this amazing compassion and this great blonde air. She was incredibly beautiful. So much so, when she was nearly abiut to go on maternity leave, I got a group of three of us to have enough confidence to ask if her substitute replacement was "hot" as well. Mrs. D pretended not to realize why we were asking that question.
What was great about Mrs/ D was she wasn't hidden - over the various days in AP Lang, she revealed quite a bit - that her husband was a cop in Philly, that she was a party girl in her younger days. That her husband was studying to be a meteorologist (no idea where that went). She was also so damn nice. That is what clinched it for all of us youngsters, especially me. We were combating teenage hormones and the general view that the "hot" girls of our grade were somewhat mean, stuck-up, and dispassionate. Well, here was this smart, beautiful woman who was the opposite. She made us feel real.
Before people accuse me of being some weirdo (which is 100% a fair reaction to this post), I should tell a quick story. About six years after I graduated, well after I met her for the last time (I did some visits to our high school those first few years out of college - mostly to meet her) one of the students in our high school one the presidential scholar award - an award that literally goes to one girl and one guy every year Part of that award, she had to name her favorite teacher and she named Mrs. D - who then received a commendation from then Sec. Education. The best part, the reasons that this girl like Mrs. D was largely the same reasons I did - she is just an amazing person and educator.
I like to pretend that me having this hopeless, endless crush on Mrs. D (she is abut 55 now with her first kids being close to college...) is because I have a more refined taste. To be honest, there were conventionally "hot" teachers in our school. to the extent one was outed as moonlighting as an escort (she taught French...) Mrs. D wasnt that, but she was aamzing as a teacher and a beauty, and yes those two were in tandem. She was beautiful, but she was also smart and witty and funny and, more than anyting, spunky - arguably the trait I am looking for the most in my elongated quest to find a wife. Mrs. D was about as great a teacher as I could have, alogn with being about as perfect a representation of a future wife as we could ahve as well - a beautiful, smart, funny woman who could teach us to love to read and write, and write and write.
