Chapter 15

"Mr. Austin, please meet me in the hall." I turned to the class, "Your first assignment today; arrange the portraits of the Presidents in their order of office. President Ford is to remain where he is. General Washington is to be placed two hangers to the left of President Ford ... his left ... not your left. You may consult each other. The moms will supply any needed materials or apparatus."

I followed my father to the hall.

As soon as the door was closed he spun on me and raised his hand to strike. I looked him straight in the eye.

"Go ahead, I hold the watch."

He looked at me and stilled his hand.

"You gave ... no ... ordered me to this task. I was ready to sit with you and mom in friendly discourse, but no, you had to make a circus out of it ... LIKE YOU HAVE DONE SINCE YOU WERE BORN! I read moms diary ... YOU could have stopped them from this ... this ... this ... charade, but you didn't.

"If I were to ask anyone of the moms' they would all tell me that you joked about how much fun this will be. I'll tell you, in deadly earnest, I AM the teacher and you WILL respect me. When we are in that ... classroom ... I am in charge."

I shattered in that moment ... I was thirteen, crying and there was no help for it. My life had changed in a split second. The man on whose lap I sat, who hugged me when I fell, who taught me to swim, ride a bike, walk, climb trees, fish, shoot, protected me through the first thirteen, had become a stranger ... just another man.