The Teacher WITH NO NECK

I was raised with a great deal of love, some Roy Rodgers and a lot of Walt Disney.  To this day, I have trouble differentiating between Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone because they were both played by Fess Parker.

When I entered a new school, out of the cocoon of Ivanhoe Elementary, I was introduced to many new things.  Amongst them, was the story of THE TEACHER WHO HAD NO NECK.  Apparently, it, THE NECK,  

had been "shot off in the war.”

Now, at the time of this story, it was 1962.  Viet Nam wasn’t on the radar for most people except a few “advisors;” Churchill, FDR and WW2 were distant memories and Korea a decade past.

Mr. M, as he shall be called, wasn’t all that old.  Just had NO NECK.  Today he would probably be called “shoulder heavy. ”

I didn’t put a great deal of thought into how his neck had landed so neatly back onto his torso;  so precisely that a chunk of his anatomy could be forever displaced wthout seeming to cause damage.  I just accepted it.  Like I accepted that Hoss and Little Joe were real brothers.  I was much too busy trying to figure out how to work “sanitary belts” and giant Kotex pads.  And dispose of them without too much humiliation.  

Between remembering locker combinations, the lyrics to obscure German songs and gym routines with burpees, Mr. M’s necklessness was accepted and forgotten.   He had never been a teacher of mine and I never had to deal with his missing neck.

 But that is until the day my grandson wanted a family tale while
 we sailed up the Endicott Fjord toward a glacier. 

As the ship rocked back and forth, I told him the story of THE TEACHER WITH NO NECK and he just looked at me.

“Grandma, how OLD were you?”

“”Ummm. Junior High.”

“WHAT!  You were in Junior High and you believed that??”

But he still  “believes” in the Tooth Fairy and I still believe in the joy it gives me when my grandson and I now have our secret “neckless” shrug that means “let’s laugh.”