Flying with TZ

Written
1995

 Breezy TZ

         easy TZ

                  teasy TZ

TZ the joke and storyteller

         made the Mathematics

         period pass painlessly

Not PC today

         he made mild gender bias seem funny.

Girls laughed harder then the boys-they had to

He knew he could not teach most

         of us boneheads any mathematics

         so he did not try too hard.

Besides the homework assignments would be done

         by the good students

         and that was enough.

The poor students wouldn’t

         and that is life.

The poor students would remember his smile,        

         his hat so politely tipped

         and his ties too bright for a teacher.

The good students would suffer a sense

         of Mathematics deprecation.

But we all knew he liked us and

         in those days that made him most unusual.

 

Breezy TZ

         easy TZ

                  teasy TZ

Fighter pilot in schoolteacher drag

         flew his hands to demonstrate

dog fighting tactics to bored students.

His hobby turned into a class in aeronautics.

There was a war on and all junior heroes

         wanted to be John Wayne

         in the cockpit of a p38.

TZ orchestrated this fantasy in flight.

The Algebra class was the recruiting station

       the aeronautics class basic training. 

After school as he worked in his yard

         with his teacher suit hung for tomorrow

         and when the afternoon sunshine

                warmed the play house

        maybe he became Walter Mitty.

 

         Fighter pilot TZ

                  ace TZ

                           war hero TZ

 

And why not?

That was easier than

teaching

         Mathematics to bone heads.

He was wing commander of our fantasy squadron.

 

 

Notes
TZ lived a few blocks from us. he was a great fellow, but not much of a teacher, His wife was my college freshman teacher and she was really very good. his poem was published in Trinidad Colorado My Home Town in 1996.