I see dead people

If one is a touchy-feely type teacher (get your mind out of the gutter), she/he might decorate their room all warm and fuzzy. Make it like a home away from home. After all, teachers and students sometime spend more of their day in their classrooms than in their homes. That's what I tried to do. While teaching high school in Rockdale County, I set up my wall-long cabinets and shelves with books, of course, but with accent lamps, and pictures of friends and other meaningful memorabilia. Conversation starters...hey, even story starters...maybe.

My shelves included large and small pictures (quite decoratively, I might add) of family, friends, and my heroes. Or people that touched me. That being said, in 2000, I wasn't quite over Princess Diana's and John-John Kennedy's deaths. So, on a separate shelf next to photos of vacations or trips with my family, pictures of friends and me, I placed these two gorgeous individuals. If one's eye had just wandered across the menagerie of objects, one's eye would surely stop at these pictures of these beautiful and, of course, famous people.

I had done this before. In my home, I had a drop leaf table in my den. Again, among photos of family and friends, I placed Di, John Jr., and Jack Nicklaus. Jack's picture was on the golf course at Pebble Beach. It wasn't a cut out. It wasn't a drawing. It was the REAL Jack playing in California...up close and almost personal. Hugh, my husband, had been to the Pebble Beach Pro-Am Golf Classic when he was in his 20's. He took a great shot of Jack. I put it in a small frame with nothing but his picture and the golf course background was cut out, so it looked like a regular person to any untrained golf-loving eye.

Once a gal came to my house and saw these 3 photographs while looking through my many other pictures in frames. As she perused my collection, her eyes stopped and stared at the JFK, Jr. photograph and said, "This person sure does look familiar." Stupid, how do you spell cultural ICON?

My friend, Nan, did the same thing. But her pictures where on the top of her upright piano. And her pictures included - THE LUST OF OUR LIVES - Tim Matheson. (Otter from Animal House.) Beautiful man. Gorgeous eyes. Is it getting hot in here? Nan, who knew how much I LOVED (ok - lusted) Tim, wrote him FOR ME, what a sweetie, and asked him to write me back because we just knew he would send me "best wishes" for my upcoming nuptials. I was getting married and was leaving Tim behind. And we weren't in our teens when we did this...we were pushing 30! Silly girls.

Anyway - back to the classroom.

I took my Lady Di and John-John pictures from home and decorated my shelves at school. One student came up one day and said to me, "Mrs. Webster, why do you have their pictures in your room?" I explained how much I adored them before they died and just wanted to have their pictures up there because they meant so much to me at one time. He said, "Well, don't go putting my picture on your shelf, because all you've got up there are DEAD PEOPLE."