By my senior year in high school, my drinking and drugging had bloomed into addiction. I got busted at a party, got locked up in detox, and eventually landed in treatment. Eventually, I got sober.
At seventeen I had to start over. I had been a popular partier, a cocky kid with a quick wit and a smart mouth. That had all been a schtick to cover up the pain and confusion and loneliness of adolescence. Without dope, I felt raw, vulnerable, and exposed. Who was I? What would I be?
Thank God for English teachers. Roger Mahn, my journalism teacher during my senior year at Wayzata High School, spotted what he deemed talent in the sports columns I scratched out for the student newspaper, and he took a personal interest in me. During an independent study with him that year, the conversation in our one-on-one sessions was more likely to turn toward growing as a person than revising a lede paragraph. That’s the way he was with all of the students: encouraging them to risk being themselves. He cared about us as people first, and we could tell.
For me, it worked. Roger–as we called him–helped me stay sober my senior year. He kindled an interest in writing. And he inspired me to teach. Without his support and influence, my life not only wouldn’t have been the same, but it might not have even been anymore.
© John Rosengren