Doc...

I guess most everyone remembers a favorite teacher or two... maybe more. I recall several from elementary school all the way through college who left a lasting mark on me.

It's strange, I don't remember all the history Mr. Winn taught me and I can't say that Mrs. Douglass' lessons from literature have been at the forefront of my mind lately. I'm also pretty sure that Father Kirby, God rest his soul, would say some words that aren't in the Bible if he knew exactly how much I retained from his senior physics class in 1985...

But I remember these people and many others because they made an impact on me. They couldn't get me to "apply myself", "quit daydreaming" or to "meet my full potential" but they taught me some things nevertheless. They taught me things that transcended the facts and figures they taught in class...

I think the teachers that stand out in my mind are the ones who exposed me to something new - A new way of considering things, a new way of talking about things or a new understanding of old things.

Of all the good teachers I have had, though, I can't say that any of them were people I would have considered friends. I was friendly with them but not their friends...

With one exception.

When I was a junior college transfer at Middle Tennessee State University, in the midst of changing my major from computer science to social science (I know) and trying to attain upper division credentials, I suddenly found myself needing to know a little something about a foreign language.

Believe it or not, I had never taken a single class in a foreign language before in my life - not in junior high, not in high school, not in the junior college that granted me an associates degree.

The only foreign words that I knew were 1-10 in Spanish from having watched Sesame Street or something and about a half dozen German phrases my grandfather had taught me.

My grandfather's mother was a first generation American who grew up speaking German in her home but stopped entirely at the outset of World War One. That's a subject for another post but I guess that's why I chose German when my university advisors told me I had to have a foreign language.

I signed up for Instructor Shockley's elementary German class but I had no idea what I was getting into. I walked into the classroom with my mostly underclassmen counterparts the first day expecting to see some old guy in lederhosen or something I guess.

I was quite surprised to see a guy not too many years my elder and definitley not wearing lederhosen. He didn't even wear a suit and tie. And the first thing we learned was that we were never to call him 'Professor' because he wasn't one yet. He didn't want to be called 'Mr.' either and though he hadn't yet earned his Ph.D., we could call him 'Doc' if we wanted because that was his nickname.

But he preferred just to be called 'Dennis'.

I had never been allowed to call a teacher by his or her given name, I had never had a teacher so close to my own age and I had never had a teacher who began the first day of class with a lengthy discussion of Punk Rock. Punk, we learned, was big in Germany so I guess that was appropriate.

The discussions were so interesting that I left my first few classes with Dennis having thoughts of changing my major to German. It was not to be, though, because I stunk at learning foreign languages, particularly German.

But I learned enough to pass the class. And I also learned a lot about Punk Rock, slam dancing, Continental subculture and picking up girls.

You see Dennis was that one and only teacher that I became real friends with. We developed a relationship outside of class. We hung out together, cruised Murfreesboro together and, a couple of times, almost got into trouble together.

Dennis had been something of a legend in the Knoxville underground Punk scene and he tried his best to convert me and a few other headbanger students into punks. I think it saddened him that he only partially succeeded.

Still, we had good times...

I left school eventually and lost track of Dennis, though I thought about him from time to time over the years.

Sometime last year, I read the following in the Tennessee Appeals Court Brief:

At the guilty plea hearing, the parties stipulated to the following facts. On October 31, 2000, the [defendant] was driving down Henley Street in Knoxville and ran two red lights. As the [defendant] ran the second red light, his vehicle struck another vehicle passing through the intersection. The driver of the other vehicle, Anjanette Comer, was killed instantly, and the passenger, Dennis Shockley, died a short time later. The [defendant] was taken to the hospital where blood testing revealed that he had a blood alcohol level of .18 percent. Moreover, the [defendant] admitted to having consumed approximately ten beers that day and 'numerous alcohol containers, both full and empty, [were] found inside the[defendant's] vehicle'.

A few e-mails confirmed that this was the same Dennis Shockley... He had been dead for five years by that time and I had no idea.

Dennis "Doc Shock" Shockley: killed by a drunk driver on Halloween night, 2000.

I'm not trying to bum anybody out. I just wanted to remember my old friend and my favorite teacher on the anniversary of his passing and to offer this bit of unsolicited advice:

If there's anyone in your past that influenced you, helped you or befriended you, and if you haven't seen that person in a long time, look them up.

Call 'em, write a letter or e-mail them...

Go ahead - do it.

Do it now.

Tschuss...