Sad news is everywhere, it seems

For those of you who remember my "ex-best friend" who dumped me after he left on his mission, well, we met in US History Class at Dixie College. His dad was the teacher, but I didn't know it at first.
Oh, how I hated history! Nothing was more boring and such a waste of time!

The man at the front of the room was, well, a funny-looking sort of guy. He was skinny and tall and wore glasses and had slicked-back hair. He had a voice like I had never heard before, and had barely a hint of a lisp.
I wasn't sure what to make of this fellow. He seemed to say a lot of things and sort of laugh at what he was saying. As I grew to know him more, I learned that his sense of humor really got to me. I mean, it was the type of quick-wit humor that I realized that I loved because of being in his class.

He'd be talking about people in history, then all of a sudden drift off the subject to make a remark that not everyone got. I learned early on that if  you wanted to laugh with him, then you needed to pay attention to every word. I listened intently on every word. The man was hilarious, and I couldn't get enough of his humor. I eventually took 4-5 different history classes from him. What can I say, I loved the man.

Some things that I really enjoyed were watching him write on the chalkboard. You had to be listening to him as he was writing or you wouldn't know WHAT he was writing. His handwriting was sometimes what you'd expect of someone who was writing without looking. Which is what he did -not look-cause he was looking at his notes.
He dotted every time there was an i or a j, and he crossed every time there was a t. Only he would do it after he finished writing the word, so the n's and g's were dotted and never the i's or the j's. That was one of my favorite things about him. Him dotting every n cause he would do it without looking.

He had been nominated for teacher of the year every year he taught at Dixie. I think he finally won it a few years after I graduated. He was competing with such masters as Maxx Rose (who is a humorous genius) and Docc Heppler. (who is another humorous genius)  (misspellings intentional as to avoid random googlings of potentially scary people).

Oh, how I grew to love that man. He was Mayor of Washington Citty at the time, so he was very much into politics, which I knew nothing about.

One of my favorite memories of him was when he laughed along with me as I played an April Fool's joke on his son. His son had already dumped me, but was now home from his mission and hung out with me a few times. He could never stop talking about his mission to Rome, and how he wanted to go back worse than anything. One April Fool's, my friend had sent me a letter saying he was tracting and had taught the Pope. Okay, I was a lot on the naive side back then, and I had no idea that pranks could be this big, so maybe I believed it for a few sentences...Oh, how I wanted to get him back after that one.

I played like I had sent my mission papers in a few weeks before, then on Sun Apr 1st, I called my friend and told him that I had gotten my call and I needed to show it to him. (Prior to my friends mission, he had given me a copy of his mission call. All of it.) I took his call and retyped it with my name in it and forged the President of the Church's name. Thus, I gave myself a mission call to the SAME MISSION that he had gone to. Hahaha. Like he would believe it for a minute....

BUT HE DID!!!!

As I was showing my "call" to my friend, I handed a copy of it to his dad, only his dad's copy had a big APRIL FOOLS written across it. So, then his dad knew it was a joke and HE LOVED IT! I could tell when he stood up, walked over to me, and asked me if "this was for real." Meaning the April Fool's that was written on his paper. Then he just smiled big and sat back down.

Sadly, Mr. Slackk is dying. He is in the last stages of his life, and he has not eaten nor drunken anything for 5 days.

I am sad about all of this.

The world will lose a great one.