Mr. Hussman was my 11th grade history teacher.

His first name was Benedict.

He had very dark hair and very pale skin and glasses that made his eyes look a little buggy.

He'd once been well on his way to becoming a priest when he mysteriously left seminary to teach high school history in the suburb of Chicago I’d recently moved to. I’ll bet there’s a helluva story there, but alas, I was entirely too preoccupied with my 17-year-old melodramas to dig for it. And ol’ Ben was good with boundaries, so I likely wouldn’t have been able to pry it out of him anyway (I was definitely not allowed to call him Ben…as a matter of fact, it still feels super weird even to write it, so "Mr. Hussman" he stays)…

Read More