The Polliwog Journal

The bell was about to ring, and my eyes were on my computer screen, getting ready to take attendance. When I looked up, there was Jake, fully six feel tall now, in new desert fatigues, his Army uniform.

I didn’t hear him come in. He was suddenly just there, smiling. My freshmen looked at this soldier, wondering.

Jake wasn’t even supposed to be in the building. He’d come in unofficially through a back door by the greenhouse to visit the agriculture teacher, who had him go to the office and get an official visitors pass.

Just getting to basic training wasn’t easy for Jake. Graduating from high school was even harder. I remember him in 9th grade–a little guy who hated English because he thought he wasn’t any good at it. But there were flashes of soul in whatever he wrote that made me want to nag him to write more.

Jake came back to me as a junior, and we worked hard to get him to pass both semesters. He still didn’t love English, but it was more school in general that he wasn’t too fond of.

It became almost a mission to seek him out in his senior year, to ask how he was doing. I’d always get a shrug of the shoulders from him, but with a little smile.

Now here he was, standing proudly in my classroom once again, though not as a student, as a man.

“I’m not even supposed to be up here,” he said. “They told me I had to stay down in Mr. Brunner’s room, but I had to come see you.”

I was glad. We talked for a bit about how he was, how he liked the army, and then he had to go.

“I had to come and see you,” he repeated. “You never gave up on me.”

No Jake, I never did.