Betsy Sabin:  

What is my story? I'm a writer and an English teacher, so this is big--my story. Well, once upon a time a basically nice, smart, and very good girl went toY high school, but did not enjoy those years very much. The school was BIG, overwhelming, and her 5th grade decision to choose to play the saxophone seemed to control her "wonder years" in high school. She was in Honor Society, Keyettes, but mostly any and every school band. (My children claim that I was a total nerd--and, by the way, so, they say, was their father, who was growing up on the opposite coast at the time and playing four sports and making straight A's and winning character awards--and maybe we were both nerds, but at least he was a jock/nerd in the San Francisco Bay area, which probably makes him much cooler.) In high school I was afraid to experiment with much of anything, including my saxophone, so Mr. Reid could not get me to ad lib in jazz band, even when I played solos. Being one of the only girls in a jazz band that took many bus trips made me even more afraid of sex than sax..well, if you had known those band guys you would understand. Afraid or not, I did end up marrying one of them, which was not a very smart thing for an Honor Society, Keyette, straight nerd type to do...so that ended up being about as confusing and enjoyable as high school had been. So I was divorced and single again in Las Vegas in my mid-20's during the disco era, and the free appetizers at the discos were primo and almost enough for a single teacher and her friends to live on--especially during the happy hours at Captain America's, Eppamanando's, and Good Time Charlie's. Yes, Las Vegas was my playground, and I grew up, danced, partied, finished a Master's Degree at UNLV just to keep a little of the nerd thing going. I saw Burt Whitt--an Oakton High School preppie cutie type who had been in my French II --at Dulles airport in 1979 near the escalator and he tried to get my number, continue the conversation, etc. etc. He looked good,too, in his three piece expensive suit--maybe a lawyer? But alas, it was too late. My knight had arrived earlier that year to save me from all previous bad men, and Burt just got a quick hug and a smile and a "Hey, Burt, you're looking good." We will be celebrating our 30th anniversary next year back in Las Vegas where we met and married, and we will try to find any living members who attended or participated in the festivities to join us. I HOPE I am just kidding, but those Las Vegas teachers lived hard--poker game mornings in the teacher's lounge with the math dept.,before school Bloody Mary brunches with the English dept., and every Friday afternoon at Skinny Dugan's bar, conveniently right across the street from Hyde Park Junior High, and also about two blocks from Arthur Ashe's beautiful home, which I drove by twice every day for six years. When we left Las Vegas to live in the San Francisco Bay area--back to where my husband, Mike, had grownup--I graduated from junior high to high school--again. And so my story has come full circle. I have been back in high school for most of the rest of my life--with the exception of 4 or 5 years teaching as an adjunct at Diablo Valley College and Indiana University, and then full-time at Pittsburgh Technical Institute, where I became a Stee...Expand for more