I had this high school music teacher and choir director, Carl Best was his name. He was a marine in a former life, though he looked anything but. He was short, rotund, very bald, wore those short Cowboy boots like maybe they wore in silent movies under his dress pants. He was very passionate, and as I would learn, had eyes like an eagle.
One day in rehearsal the choir missed a dissonate chord by a tiny bit. Carl was accustomed to winning contests with choirs hitting that note and he was not happy. His face went beet red. Pumping his fists like pistons, he jumped up and down like he was on a pogo stick and when he stopped, the cuffs of his pants were stuck in the tops of his tiny boots.
I was an extremely shy (read terrified of my own shadow) kid, but that scene was too much, and, thinking I was hidden behind the bass section, I snickered a little tenor snicker that I thought was all hidden like.
"IT'S NOT FUNNY!!!!!!"
As I peeked around, he was pointing straight at ME! I was mortified. How in the world did he see that?
He stood there pointing the stubby forefinger at the end of his fully extended arm for what seemed an eternity, as the red slowly drained from his rotund face into mine, traveling on the laser light shooting from his fingertip straight between my eyes.
He never said another word about it, just pulled his pants out of his boots and proceeded with practice. But he saw something in me in that instant of rage other than my faux pas.
He asked me to stay after practice, and trembling with fear, I slowly approached his desk. He got up, slowly walked around the desk and stood directly in front of me. Fearing the worst, I looked at my feet.
"Look me in the eye," he said. And when I did he proceeded to tell me what a worthwhile person I was, and how much I had to offer the world, and how he never wanted to see me looking down again, and how I was never to forget what he was saying. Ever."
He never said a single word about my intemperate faux pas.
It was years later before I realized what he had seen in that one abrupt instant. He had seen someone helpless that he had wounded, like someone he'd seen before.
I remember walking out of there as confused as I have ever been, wondering how he could be so sure about something I was so unsure about.
But I never forgot it. And I never will.