Arno Strasser – Sunset Observer #36, by Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture | @MDWorld

October 16, 2014 Whitney Farmer 0 Comments

@farmer_whitney (Twitter/FLICKR) or farmerwhitney (Instagram) and Facebook

Whitney Farmer – McLane High School Class of 1982 – miraculously has an M.B.A.…

Arno Strasser was beautiful. He was the best reason I could think of to not ditch Algebra II.

Arno was in my class, a couple of rows back and over to my left. This allowed the sun to frame him with an angelic halo. He sat up straight and had perfect hair. I would glance at him secretly sometimes as I read the entire book “Gone with the Wind” during class. That book and Arno’s perfect posture were the only reasons I didn’t fall asleep as the teacher spoke for 53 minutes without changing volume, rhythm, tone, or inflection in the class period that immediately followed lunch in the desiccated school that baked beneath the Fresno sun.

Near the semester break, our guidance counselor relented to my constant begging that had started before the class started, when I first received my class registration and learned that I hadn’t been given Mr. Sanborn’s Algebra II. Finally I was allowed to drop the class and was released into a forecast of academic failure. The tide only turned after my PSAT scores reached the guidance counselor’s office, and I was summoned. My scores were good, and I was told that it had been assumed that I had been just “…a dumb blonde cheerleader.” What the counselor didn’t realize is that I was a dumb cheerleader. Still am, just not always blonde. Always was. And will be, God willing. It’s about faith…

I would re-take Algebra II with Mr. Sanborn and be successful, but I would never see Arno again. This seems impossible in a school where I would nearly live for two more years that encompassed a surface area less than a Costco.

After I took the SAT, I was able to proclaim in front of Mr. Sanborn’s class on the following Monday that – because of his efforts – I had learned the quadratic equation and had used it without breaking a sweat during the test administration. I still can recite it on demand, which – along with doing bird calls and lighting Bic lighters with my toes – is a hidden talent and vital if I want to seem compelling at parties.

Though there be dragons in the deeps of this world, my first Algebra II teacher wasn’t one of them. I would meet monsters later. Truthfully, I was a kid who read “Gone with the Wind” third seat from the front during class. GWTW takes time, and it is so thick that it can’t be hidden. It occurred to me perhaps five years ago that this was incredibly dishonorable of me.

I paid for my sin.  Not taking Algebra II as a sophomore kept me from taking Calculus a senior. And in the far far future, I would be registered for upper division graduate level Econometrics as I pursued my MBA.  And I would be told that I had to find a way to do a crash course in Calculus before they would let me in the class. And after a long treasure hunt, I was able to find an ex-Marine at a community college who was willing to give up his lunch break to drill me in the fundamentals that would allow me to determine incremental change over time and marginal returns in the promised land of finance.

Because I had been a snotty kid, I had to take Calculus from an ex-Marine drill sergeant. A decade later. Ponder that. Selah.

Plus I would have nightmares, every finals week at university during uncountable academic quarters. The same dream, always: I had to return to the same class and sit in the same desk under the instruction of the same teacher. But now I was a grown woman, and the desk had shrunk into the size of those that used to fit our small bodies in elementary school.  I had no choice if I wanted to learn the lessons that I needed and should have learned years before. So as a grown woman, I would cram my body uncomfortably into the desk in the back row, laughed at by children who were doing what needed to be done in their right season under the sun.

And as comfortable as I might be now reading a company’s financials, the mistakes I make to this day are algebra mistakes. Flipped signs. Zero in the denominator. It’s as if I failed in my first battle against a monster. I have lived to fight again and overcome, but my wounds show and trouble my sleep.

Moral of the story: Sit up straight. Stay in class. Go to war against monsters. Be like Arno.

NOTE: THE WAR MEMORIAL CEREMONY IN HONOR OF TIM KELLY AND ARNO STRASSER WILL BE CONDUCTED ON NOVEMBER 7TH, 2014 AT C.L. McLANE HIGH SCHOOL IN FRESNO, CALIFORNIA.

Photo of Arno Strasser, from our yearbook, again swiped by me from a posting by James Acomb on the McLane High School Group Page on Facebook.  

NEXT WEEK: “TO BE is an Action Word”