If I ever write an auto-biography, this story most likely will be there. It is a story about my life I thought you might find interesting. Many times when I tell my stories, people say, “You should write a book about that.” So, here’s a start…

1970 Minnesota -- Mr. Martin was my favorite teacher. Officially, as my speech teacher, he taught me how to have confidence in front of an audience and to organize my spoken words. He taught me many good things about individual character that still are part of who I am.

His heritage was Irish. He treated St. Patrick’s Day as a national holiday. I think he might have been part leprechaun, because always had an impish child-like twinkle in his eyes.

One day he was telling me and my friend Lee about how much his wife hated the sight of an old out-house in the back yard of the house across the street from her kitchen window. Of course, we chose to interpret that fact as a challenge and wanted to use his wife’s wishes to fuel our own impish desires.

Late one night, we snuck into the neighbor’s back yard, picked up the smelly, rotting outhouse and dumped it upside down into the hole hiding beneath. Mrs. Martin was happy; the neighbors were not. And, the good news was that the obsolete nasty necessary room was gone.