Growing up in a small farming town in the early 90's is not what anyone would call exciting. Most times, it was about as fun as watching paint dry. Weekends could be fun, if you liked to go out and drink, or if you had a girlfriend. I had no girlfriend, did not like to party, and was not a typical small town farm boy. Needless to say I had a lot of free time on my hands.
Autumn Friday nights in small town America mean one thing: FOOTBALL! Now I loved to play football, so for a while, I fit in, somewhat. I loved playing football, watching football, living and breathing football. What I did not like was schoolwork. I always seemed to scrape by, but just barely. That's where Mrs. Hall came in and everything changed.
Mrs. Hall was the math teacher in our school. Algebra, geometry, trig, calculus; if it was math related, you had Mrs. Hall. Mrs. Hall was a redhead, about 5'9", and was in great shape at 41 years old. She was married to a guy at least 20 years older than her, had no kids, and lived outside of town in a nice little farm house.
Mrs. Hall also had gone to school with my mother, and they were still friends, so any time I was having issues, my mom would know about it, sometimes before I did. Which leads us to the meat of this story.
It was SR year, September, football season in progress, and I had just turned 18. I had been neglecting my homework in all of my classes, but was passing most of them, except algebra. No pass equals no play. I knew that I couldn't fail, but I was not sure how to make up the extra work so I could pass. Fortunately (in hindsight) Mrs. Hall had already spoken to my mom about setting up some tutoring for me so I could pass. Mom had signed me up without me even having a say in the matter.
Mrs. Hall usually tutored out of her home, not extremely unusual in those days. Our first session was to be on Saturday at 2 in the afternoon. I was pissed about missing my college games, but I had to make up the points, so I sucked it up and went to her place. She met me at the door in a pair of modest shorts and a semi form fitting t shirt with a picture of our school mascot on it.
"Come on in, Charlie, we have a lot to cover today." she said as she led me to her dining room.
"Yeah, ok." I mumbled, walking inside.
We sat down at the table, facing each other, and I opened up my book, ready to get it over with.
"I know you would rather be watching football today, but I do not want to see you fail my class." she said with genuine concern in her voice. "I want all my students to succeed, so I will do whatever it takes to help them understand. Let's work on a few problems, maybe I can tell what you need help with." she said as she slid a sheet of 20 algebra problems in front of me.
I breezed through them, and slid them back to her. She seemed irritated at my lack of effort, but did not say anything. I watched the look on her face go from irritation to shock as she checked my answers. "These are all correct." she said. "And you barely spent any time on them."
"I know the work Mrs. Hall, it's just..." I trailed off.
"Just what?" she asked.