Mustaches Inspire Great Faith.

Mustaches are so in right now. They have become a form of expression for the hipster generation...people pose with their fingers over their upper lips, they decorate with mustaches, they create memes with mustaches, they have t-shirts with mustaches.

Personally, there have been two mustached men who influenced my life.

1). That little Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

Maybe it's because I'm a murder mystery addict, but my fondness for this little man and his famous mustaches rivals my love for Sherlock, Tana French's books, and Bones. And Psych. And The Mentalist. See the pattern, here?

2). My AP US History Teacher, Rob Gardner.

He totally looks like Teddy Roosevelt. Especially with glasses on.

You know that teacher who you will remember for the rest of your life? The one that really taught you, and didn't just lecture at you? Well, Mr. Gardner was that teacher for me. He was definitely not an easy teacher, but he was one of the absolute best teachers I have ever had.

I was completely terrified walking into his classroom during registration junior year. We had to have some sort of necessary pre-class meeting to get the textbook and start reading it a week or so before school started. But, I had survived AP World (with my other favorite teacher, Mr. Bracken), and I figured APUSH wouldn't be too much worse.

But I did have some reason to be afraid. The class was a lot of work (and those textbooks, I swear, are written with the sole intent to either kill the reader through boredom, or to become murder weapons--you could cause some serious damage with one of them if you ever got the urge to bludgeon someone the week before the AP exam), and I'll admit that sometimes I slipped up and got lazy. Well, lazy, or overrun by all the plays I participated in. That stuff can seriously wear you out.

(I still blame the 4 I got on the exam on the fact that I was sick that day. I made up for every instance of laziness.)

(And, I got a 5 on every AP English/Literature exam I took, so it was definitely the sickness. So there.)

I'm not sure when it clicked that Gardner was one of the best teachers I've ever had. Maybe it was when I realized he had a Bush barbie doll a student gave him as a joke (he was a liberal, no mistake). Maybe it was all the artwork he had in his room, everything from Vermeer to modern.

Or, maybe it was when he introduced us to America: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Maybe it was when he got rid of the smokescreen myths about the founding fathers that everyone learns as a kid, and showed them to us as humans. Maybe it was when he taught us about the Battle at Wounded Knee, a relatively forgotten incident in American history, and opened my eyes to the fact that the treatment of Native Americans by the settlers, over time, was like Genocide. Maybe it was when he assigned us to read Upton Sinclair's the Jungle.

Or maybe it was when I cried during the segment on the Holocaust in the WWII unit (even though I've seen pictures of those horribly emaciated bodies millions of times, I always cry), and he graciously asked me if I was ok after class, and said that from then on he would forewarn students.

After the year was over, I felt like I had become friends with Gardner, even though I was a student. I tend to make friends with my teachers easily. I don't know if that makes me a brown-noser, but I just like talking to them. I talked to Bracken endlessly about school and life. I talked to Gardner about history and inequality, and about the plays I was in. I talk to Elree now about art and class material and politics. I talk to my advisor, Georgi, about Medieval Literature and married life. I genuinely like these people.

So I volunteered to TA for Mr. Gardner during a blank spot in my schedule Senior year. It was a bit like taking APUSH all over again, but this time I didn't have to worry about reading all that material. I could just sit back and listen to the rich and flawed tapestry that is the history of our country. I could ponder in more depth the things that had disturbed me so viciously the first time around, like the Battle at Wounded Knee, the Holocaust, and the Bikini Island Nuclear tests. I could cry at man's inhumanity to man with no one noticing, since I sat in the back of the room. And, I could still easily rattle off all of the US presidents up to Obama...and all the 50 States and their capitols. And a few of the dates of events, court cases...

Well, when you drill that information in hard enough for an AP test, it sticks. Not my fault.

I can safely say that I learned more from Mr. Gardner and Mr. Bracken than I did in almost any other high school class. Those two men will always be role models to me, and they continue to inspire me. For a long time, I wanted to write a murder mystery novel with my own mustachioed detective inspired by Mr. Gardner.

I'm really grateful for Mr. Gardner. And for Mr. Bracken. They really made a difference in my life simply by the way they taught. They really do deserve every accolade and teaching award they receive. They are excellent teachers and excellent human beings. If I ever do decide to teach English, I sure hope I can make a difference in the lives of my students just like those two high school teachers did for me. I certainly hope that they still remember me as a good student, because I certainly remember them as great teachers and good friends.

& That's Elementary.