Mrs. Haffly: If you’re reading this…..

Dad said you had checked out the blog and immediately I started to wonder how many spelling errors and grammatical mistakes I made. Geeez! It’s been quite a while since 8th grade, yet I am still worried about you reading my ‘papers.’ Ha! Ha! I guess its time I should just get over it. I was reminiscing this week about 7th grade, thinking of all the fun we had and all the jokes we played on Dr. Haffly. I remember us piling into the big van to go and pick up the hearing aids he always seemed to ‘forget.’ Of course, we would have to stop along the way and pick up the official snacks of the 7th grade class: Whoppers and Dr. Pepper. Of course, the Dr. Pepper went hand in hand with our class belching contests. And how can I forget the time I beat out the resident champion Jon Hess to be crowned belching champion of ACC! I think one of my favorite memories was when Dr. Haffly said we didn’t have to do class one day. We pushed all the desks out to the side, and built an enormous Lincoln Log village across the room. Of course, I can’t leave out the reason I passed Algebra that year: Dr. Haffly’s brownies. I still make those ‘famous’ brownies. For those of you reading this and wondering what kind of a teacher this guy was, well, he was the best teacher I ever had. Unconventional, yes, but somehow he seemed to make the biggest impression on me. He wanted us to learn, but not because we had to. I think he wanted us to learn just to learn, and not because we were getting a grade for it. He also put up with my unusual Algebra methods. For a long time, Mrs. H., I’ve wanted to write you and tell you what Dr. Haffly meant to me, but I never really knew what to say. This is only a glimpse of the memories of that strange and fun 7th grade year, but hopefully it’ll let you know that we won’t forget him any time soon. And sorry, I still can’t bring myself to call you Fanchion!