I remember the day well. I hurried to my teacher’s garage which was situated at the north easternmost corner of his garden, right next to where his little girls played in the sandbox. I stepped through the side door. I was greeted by pungent wafts of pipe smoke. The room was disheveled and lined entirely with old, well worn books. My teacher greeted me, shook my hand, and invited me to sit down. He sat down in a club chair that was opposite and slightly to the left of my own. Crossing his legs, he puffed on his pipe while gripping his tattered copy of Homer’s Iliad. My thoughts were swirling with anticipation and self doubt. Would I keep up with the work load? Would I keep up with my teacher’s intellect? Would I have anything to say? But those doubts disappeared as my teacher’s encouraging demeanor and interest in the book swept me away to the heroic plains of Troy . Over the next month he opened my mind to the conflict and character of Achilleus and Agamemnon, the leading characters of this epic. We discussed the plot, setting, structure, and poetry of the book. He often recited lines from the original Greek so that I could hear the music of this muse-inspired bard. Together, we were shown the beauty of marriage, the sacrifices of true friendship, and the dangers of overweening pride.
This was the crucible of my desire to learn and to teach. After finishing Homer I discovered that my mind was not satisfied with this one book alone. And so I read another, the Homeric Hymns, if I remember rightly. And then I read another. Every week I would go visit my teacher who was fast becoming a good friend. Soon my desire for reading merged with my desire to see my wise instructor. And so things went. But, knowledge gained soon leads to knowledge dispensed, so one afternoon my instructor said, “You should be teacher; you won’t be happy writing computer code the rest of your life”. I thought for sure that his pipe smoke had gone to his head.