A Tribute to Pane When I got to college, I realized that I would never again have another English teacher like

Mr. Pane. Everyday my senior year of high school, an hour before b eing released, I had the pleasure of enjoying the antics of an upbeat little mid dle-aged man who once sported an awe-inspiring mullet. Also having been my tenn is coach and previously my creative writing teacher, Mr. Pane and I had already secretly established that each other were crazy. His class routinely consisted of everyone being forced to listen to the melancho ly ramblings of old British men reading poetry by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitm an. Despite these bleak days, Mr. Pane frequently made sure that his class was full of excitement. This man had perfected the art of being able to leave someo ne profoundly confused, to the point of being at a complete loss of what to even think or question. We were one day presented with the strange assignment of br inging a penny to class the following afternoon. Everyone was required to do so , and the penny had to be a shiny one. No explanation for this was given but it was expected, so of course we all did as we were told. I'm not sure what usually runs through one's head when asked to bring a penny in to a twelfth grade English class, but I for one assumed that there must have bee n some sort of clever means to the whole thing. As I rolled the penny around on my desk waiting for the teacher to arrive to class, I noticed that everyone els e must have been feeling just as natural about the whole penny thing as I was. Yet, knowing Mr. Pane, I had a feeling deep down somewhere that we were all prob ably wrong and something really odd was about to occur. My first thought on the topic involved how the ancient Greeks buried their dead. Coins were always pla ced over the eyes so that one could pay their toll to Charon, who would then tak e them across the river Styx and into the underworld. The scary thing about thi s was I could picture Mr. Pane secretly throwing us on a bus in an insane rage a nd taking us to a morgue to ensure that the bodies made it safely across the thr esholds of a mythological boiling river. As the short little man with glasses far too enormous for his head walked casual ly into the room, people looked up at him in wonderment of what would take place . I shifted my eyes and sunk down in my seat, now assuming the worst. A small clear petry dish was sat down by the odd little man, on a table in the front of the classroom. "Did everybody bring their shiny pennies," he asked us jovially. No one spoke, but no one shook there heads either. We were then given thoroug h instructions. First we were to bring our penny to the front of the room and place it in a cup next to the petry dish, which contained a tiny bone fragment. The bone went by unexplained and unquestioned. After giving our "offering" of a cent to the bone , we were to give it a little pat for good luck. At this point, we would exit t he classroom, walk to the end of the hallway and nod to the Exit sign 3 times an d return to class. These acts were not questioned. Everyone just figured there would be a logical explanation for all of this after everything was said and done. Upon everyone's return to their proper desks, Mr. Pane begin class without a word about the str ange ritual that had just taken place. Many students were left baffled by this event for what may have been years to come, such as myself. Despite that eccent ric act, we also had some fun times and good learning experiences in that man's class. Around the end of the school year in the early springtime, we were given an assi gnment. The class was to have a medieval war out on the practice field. All of

the males were to build a weapon to fight in the battle with, and the females c ooked food to enjoy after the crusade took place. To say the least, people were pretty excited about this. Who doesn't want to run around with a self-made jou sting stick or mace in their hand while beating disliked classmates? I didn't k now much about medieval food, but I did know that none of it could have been goo d. I mean, we are talking about the period of time when everyone suffered from the bubonic plague, refused to bathe, and threw their defecations out in the str eets for the rats to enjoy. So I decided this was my chance to show Mr. Pane th at I too, could be eccentric. The night before the big event, I went to the sto re and bought a box of red velvet cake. I baked half of it in a round pan, and the other half in a small square pan. Very carefully, I shaped the cake on a la rge tray into a flattened out armadillo. I then covered the entire thing with g rey icing. To top it off, I gave it little black x's for eyes and tire tracks a cross its back. It was a cute little cake, and when I cut into after the war, t he unrealistic red guts coming out of my happy little road kill meal revolted ev eryone. I think deep down inside I made the teacher proud. My first real epiphany in life can also be accredited to Mr. Pane. With the ass ignment of writing our own epic, I decided that I must do something adventurous and spectacular. I didn't want to be one of those boring people in class who di d something lame like saving their cat's life from being hit by a car or somethi ng. I ended up taking the assignment a little too literally and decided I was g oing to build a raft and sail it across the intra-coastal waterway at the end of my street. The waterway was notorious for its severe tidal pull out into the n earby ocean, and apparently some kid died trying to swim across it once. I knew deep down that this challenging battle against the currents would make for a br illiant and exciting epic to write about and present to the class. Off I was, i nto my garage to begin building my raft. I wasn't sure if I wanted to use a hea vy Styrofoam, or just attempt tying a bunch of beach toys together and riding on them instead. Halfway through my building process, I was discovered by my fath er in the act of doing these strange things. After explaining to him the brave task I would fulfill so as to write a great epic, he initially thought I was nut s. I was then stopped from sailing across the intra-coastal because apparently it was, "too dangerous". Ever since that day, I think deep down I despised my f ather a little more than normal for causing me to have to make up an uninteresti ng fictional epic to turn is as my project. Throughout my times in Mr. Pane's classes, I realized at the end of the year, th is weird man had somehow touched my life. Whether it was in a good way or not, I'm still unsure to this day, but I still felt that his actions must not go by u nnoticed. On the very last day of my senior year of high school, I mocked the m ovie "The Dead Poets Society" by standing up on my desk in the middle of class a nd boldly declaring, "Oh captain, my captain!!" Only two people followed this m otion, and Mr. Pane clearly had no idea of how to react, but I know that he will never forget the psycho that stood on the desk and commended him, as he so dese rved on the last day of her senior year.