Remembering Mr. Young

There are few things like death when it comes to sparking up old memories. Chris Young died last week; the cigarettes he wolfed down between class periods finally led to a sad, inevitable conclusion.

I hadn't talked to him since 1997, when I met him at the house and we discussed some fiction and poetry he had written. That a teacher cared so much about a former student's opinion always flattered me.

Considering the great disconnect I felt with the place, I don't talk about Mentor much anymore. But his death really pushed me to think, to recall what the man meant. It no small amount of meaning, nothing short of guiding me down my path as a writer.

My love of writing began in that classroom in the corner of Mentor High School's A-Wing. For the first time, my brimming teen anger had been redirected into words - not just the boilerplate "woe is me" high school stuff, but fleshed out, three-dimension writing touching on deep emotions and vivid descriptions. For a character piece I wrote about a lonely old man sitting on a bench at the mall, he gave me an A, couldn't stop talking about it to my mother at parent-teacher conferences, and repeatedly referred to it as a sign my writing had matured.

At a time when I was virtually estranged from my own father because of his transgressions abroad, Mr. Young served as a good sounding board. I lacked for male role models; by default, he was the only one, and he never sent me away when I need a few moments. He knew there were issues; I had danced around them in my writing, and later filled in some blanks. But he listened when few other adults bothered; my next English teacher at Mentor always called me "George" even though I was one of the few kids in class who bothered to read the material.

He even urged me to join his Tae Kwon Do class at the local YMCA (I last two months, thanks to my sparring partners always being young toughs who wanted to humiliate me or the middle-aged handicapped guy who threw punches and whose kicks found my groin way too often). But I remember his friendship after junior year the most. At least a few times a week, I talked about life and literature with him in the morning before classes started.

If it wasn't poetry, it was the college admissions process, but sometimes we hit on more sensitive topics. Perhaps what I remember the most was the time he uttered, "Don't fuck up your life because you hate your father."

That bold declaration took me aback. Straight to the point, it was the first time I ever heard a teacher utter the f-word in plain conversation. While he often sprinkled in some light swearing throughout class, that crossed a new line.

In retrospect, it couldn't have sounded more sensible or eloquent.