I think I was destined, if not doomed, to be a teacher, which I decided to become a teacher at the tender age of 10.

Of course, before that, in typical kid fashion, I’d fancied all sorts of other job. Maybe I’d be an explorer, or an astronaut, or a tightrope walker (in spite of being terrified of heights), or a pirate (not having a clue I suffer from chronic seasickness). The list was as endless as it was absurd.

But in early October 1957 that all changed when the USSR launched Sputnik. In case you didn’t know, Sputnik was the first successful orbiting satellite. As far as satellites today, it wasn’t much. It was a small metal ball, about 185 pounds, and only was in orbit till January, when it unceremoniously crashed and burned. Beyond that, it had a couple of radio transmitters that sent Beep-Beepskis for all to hear.

But even though Sputnik didn’t perform any vital or threatening tasks itself, it sure raised hell in the entire US of A. To use a precise psychological term, people went bugsnot. And one target of their hysteria was our educational system, which according to them (and the politicians of the day), had to be vastly inferior to Russia’s, since they launched a satellite and we didn’t.

The hysterics were (as they usually are) completely out to lunch. The fact was the Russians weren’t ahead of us in any technology, nor was their education system superior to ours. But since facts mean nothing to either manipulators or the manipulated, there was a huge push to gear up our schools, ramp up our teachers, and wake up our students. As a result, all sorts of educational initiatives sprang up, seemingly overnight, to produce a nation of brilliant, accomplished young people. The less said about the results, the better.

So did I, in a blast of patriotic fervor, decide to become a teacher, in order to leave the commies in our dust? Nope, not even remotely. I figured the country could get on just fine without the contributions of L’il Dopey Boy. Looking at how things are today, I may have made a serious strategic mistake, but alas, since it’s too late to do anything about it, I’ll just have to live with the burden of guilt my inaction has caused me.

What did give me a lifelong commitment to the Ed Biz was this: Mrs. Pattinson, in an effort to keep her charges au courant, had assigned each of us to do a different project on Sputnik. I can’t remember anyone else’s, but mine was to make a presentation on its size, equipment, and functions. I got into it up to my eye teeth, scouring every magazine and newspaper I could find that mentioned it. Then I organized it into a presentation that, while I rehearsed it painstakingly, I’m sure wasn’t one-eighth as good as I thought it was.

No matter — I soldiered on, and with my notes on the desk in front of me, proceeded to astound my classmates, as well as Miss Pattinson too (at least I thought so at the time).

Anyhow, in the middle of my “lecture,” a strange feeling came over me, a sudden realization, an epiphany: I was meant to be a classroom teacher. While I’d never thought of being one before, I never thought of being anything else after.

War of the words

As a result of my epiphany, for the rest of my schooling, I spent as much time studying the teachers as I did the subjects. The good ones showed me what to aspire and gave hints of how to do it, even though I could never duplicate their style. The crappy ones showed me what to avoid, and I’d like to think that while I may’ve lacked many of the good ones’ virtues, I mostly avoided the crappy ones’ vices.

Because epiphanies are screamingly obvious, I never forgot the one in my Sputnik lecture. Furthermore, I always thought that alone made me pursue a teaching career. But while that may have kicked off my drive to become a teacher, I recently realized another factor further encouraged me, namely my mother, who was a teacher from Way Back When.

While it may happen with other professions, it seems teachers are always on duty — in the classroom or not. Certainly my mother was. Any slip of grammar, usage or pronunciation was swiftly and strongly corrected. Of course she was almost always right, especially since a lot of my vocabulary I knew only from reading and thus had no idea of their connotations, pronunciations or anything.

A perfect example was our endless argument over “forehead.” I can’t remember exactly when it started — I think when I was in single digits. Regardless of when the opening salvos started, they never ended. My mother pronounced it “far-id,” accent on the first syllable. I, like every other person on God’s green earth, pronounced it “for-head,” accent also on the first syllable.

I tried to settle the issue with Miriam-Webster as the judge:

“Look,” I said, “there it is, ‘for-head,’ preferred pronunciation.”

“Keep reading, Bozo,” she said. “Either is acceptable. And if you’ll note, ‘far-id’ is the preferred British pronunciation.”

“Preferred British pronunciation?” I sneered.

“Yes,” she said, refusing to budge.

“Listen, I dunno how to break this to you,” I said, “but the Revolutionary War ended when you were a little girl, and the Limeys lost.”

My mother could be a tough customer, but one thing she was hypersensitive about was her age … which is exactly why I said what I did.

“You know,” she said, giving me her death ray stare, “sometimes you really are a miserable so-and-so.”

Then she pulled herself up to her full 5-foot-nothing, shook her head in disgust, and marched out of the room.

It should go without saying, I didn’t chase after her offering my apologies and begging her forgiveness, because it wouldn’t have done any good. The “For-head” — “Far-id” thing wasn’t a few isolated skirmishes. Instead, it was part of an ongoing war — a war without either an end or a victor. Nonetheless, I always got a kick out of it. And for all my cheap shots and weaponized snottinesses, I think my mother got a kick out of it too.

I’d like to end this column with a rhyme from my favorite poet:

In our clashes o’er how to pronounce forehead,

Our tempers flared, and then became torrid.

For neither I nor my mother

Would concede to each other,

And the results were inevitably horrid.