Well, while going to my speech therapist, which really is more like a cognative therapist, I heard someone asking a guy to spell his first name and then I heard him say "Anton, A-N-T-O-N." While that may be an odd, irrelavent name to some, I turned my head right away - see, my great (maybe another great in there?) grandfather was named Anton Arnold, and my 9th grade English teacher was Anton Dern. Lo and behold, standing there, looking older than I had remembered with grey hair and in sweatpants, was Mr. Dern! Now this is not important to anyone that didn't go to West or know of Anna Dern, but Jamie, Lauren and Sig should be slightly impressed.

We talked for a bit as he tried to remember who I was. He had me and my cousins mixed up a little - but thats ok, many people thought that Jolene was Jenny's sister, not mine. I learned that he had talked to Taylor and he was in the 8th grade. I also learned that he had some colon surgery and a stroke and he was doing some therapy for that. He told me that his speech was slurred so he had to go to speech therapy. I told him that I was in grad school at Michigan and that he lived down the street from my relatives, the Falkowskis (is that spelled right.... damn polish names).

I also explained about my accident and was conscious of what it meant for me to say "brain injury" because he remembered me for being a little smarter than the rest of the kids in that class. I, in fact, cite a time in his class as my most proud moment. We were reading 12 Angry Men and we got half-way through it and he asked us to decide if the defandant was guilty of not, we were then to physically divide ourselves into groups. The whole class sat on the side saying he was guilty except for me and Mr. Dern... throughout the class, people slowly migrated to my side of the classroom. By the end, almost no one thought that he was guilty. I think thereafter, that Mr. Dern really respected my individuality and ability to stand up in the face of popular opposition. I would love to talk with him some more - I have 3, possibly 6 more therapy sessions scheduled in the next 2 weeks, maybe I will see him again. Oh, and I'm gonna post this in the Debate blog too, I would like to open up more dialog with those people too. Hope all is well! I am terribly bored and without vehicle, feel free to call or even visit - ttyl