Peacefully Rest, Mrs. Collar

One of my high school teachers died recently, and I decided to write out this memory for her family.  Click here for obituary.


Mrs. Collar left me with a lot of memories of her class, and this is one of my favorites:


It was a mid-October Friday afternoon, fourth block; Mrs. Collar had assigned some history-related task or another for us to complete while she updated her online attendance records. But the school day had worn on us all, and I wouldn't be surprised if most of us had just been creating masterpiece stick figures, or passing secret missives to our neighbors.

Then, in an unexpected display of levity, Mrs. Collar posed this question to her classroom full of 10th grade students, "Alright, who is Jessica Simpson married to?"

We all looked up from whatever we had been doing as she explained, "I just got this pop up, and I'd like to get it right!" Some of us chuckled, a few friends exchanged bemused expressions. "They gave me three options here: Aaron Carter, Orlando Bloom - no, that can't be right - or Nick... how do you say this? LAT-chee?"

Chuckles exploded into uproarious laughter. We celebrity-savvy 15 year olds couldn't believe that our World History teacher had mispronounced Nick Lachey's name, let alone that she was answering an internet pop-up question. (I actually didn't know who he was at the time, and would have likely made the same mistake. I didn't tell anyone, but now you know.)

Mrs. Collar seemed to realize that she'd said something pretty funny, and she let out a light little laugh, asking, "What is it?"

The girl seated in the desk closest to the computer just said, "It's Nick 'La-SHAY,' Mrs. Collar. Nick 'La-SHAY.' "

"Oh well," she replied. "Is that the right one?" We affirmed this, and then, "Alright! I got it right!" And she'd answered her question just in time for the afternoon announcements to sound over the school intercom system. That day, our 10th grade World History class finished that school week with smiling faces galore.