Confessions Of A Tender Heart

One of my last projects in my sophomore art class was to make a self-portrait. I was sent to the next room and walked in curiously. A tall man with salt and pepper hair stood with his back to me washing his hands in the sink at the back of the room.

          “Hello? I need to use the light table,” I said.

          The man turned around and smiled. I could now see that he wore oval-shaped glasses and thought how they just seemed to add to his character.

          “Hello, the light table is over here.” He pointed to a small white table in the corner of the room.

          For the remainder of that year, I completed my project in his room.

          “ Mr. Herman?” I asked him one day as I finished up my self-portrait. “My brother won’t teach me how to use Adobe Photo shop. Is there a class I could possibly take next year?”

            “Yes, we do have a class that teaches Adobe Photoshop.” Mr. Herman explained. “ But it only lasts two semesters.”

I smiled, “ Thank you, Mr. Herman!”

            It was now the beginning of my junior year in high school. I walked into a room that was vaguely familiar. It was Mr. Herman’s classroom. Only the room was moved around just a tad.  There was a podium in front of a group of tables.

            “Pleas sign your name on the chart and class will begin,” Mr. Herman said.

            So I took out a pen from my book bag and signed the chart that was being passed around.

            “What do you think CS stands for?” Mr. Herman asked. He stood in front at the podium and smiled at the students sitting at the tables.

            One of them raised a hand and said, “Counter Strike?”

            Laughter rippled around the round. Counter Strike, at that time, was the most popular computer game to play. Even Mr. Herman found this answer funny and laughed.

            “CS is the official Computer Language computers use amongst each other to communicate.”

            As the day progressed Mr. Herman explained how computers used numbers to communicate with each other instead of words.  Later on enduring the class, we had a choice of the computer we would use to do our work and so began my relationship with Mr. Herman. I picked the seat furthest from him and closest to the door.

            “Class, your project is to create a moving truck in Flash,” Mr. Herman told us the began his the next morning. He then explained how most web sites used Flash in the interface their web site.

            I followed the instructions, but Flash was more complicated and hard to work on. I pushed it away and worked on another project. I began to talk more to Mr. Herman, about little things like how the cutting machine worked.

            I’m not talking about a tiny cutting board. I’m talking about a huge machine that cut stacks of one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty pieces of paper at a time. But the paper-cutting machine didn’t have a safety device to keep it from cutting off any stray fingers. Later on in the year, Mr. Herman had one installed.

            As the year progressed and I asked my questions about the equipment in Mr. Herman’s room we became closer to one another. Some of my projects were excused just because I helped Mr. Herman complete some of his daily tasks. I began to enjoy the moments I spent just talking to him, and found every way possible to spend the most amount of time in his class.

            Later on in the year, I bought myself a new laptop. This came in handy for the second portion of my junior year and the Adobe Photoshop class that taught us how to manipulate photos. This was the class I had been waiting for and I already had Adobe Photoshop installed onto my laptop and a USB flash drive to transport my work. 

Listening and intently watching during Mr. Herman’s demonstration on projects, I began to catch on a lot quicker. I actually completed my work in Adobe Photoshop. But in my free time I also began to fool around with a video-making program called Ulead Video Studio. Then it was Mr. Herman’s turn to ask the questions.

            “Hey, what are you doing?”

            “I’m making a video for my you tube account. My brother loaded it in my computer and I figured since I completed my work, I’d work on my videos.”

            I looked at Mr. Herman with a bit of a smile. I was a little nervous, but I had wanted to show him my project. I wanted him to be proud of me.

            He smiled and asked, “What’s the name of the program?”

            “It’s called Ulead Video Studio. Do you want to see my first project?”

            “Sure.” Mr. Herman said with a smile as he sat down beside me.

            I handed him the earphones and he put them on. Then I pressed play and he watched my whole video.

            “That was good.” He said and took off the earphones and went back to his own tasks.

            The class was assigned a project to create an image that would be heat pressed onto a shirt. I used Felix The Cat on mine. With Felix it simply said, “ You never know who likes you…” on the front and “ Until you open you eyes,” on the back.

Soon after this I began to come to his class in the morning time. Before the bell for homeroom even rang. “So, Mr. Herman, what are you going to do today?” I said as I began to draw on the freshly inserted white boards with his markers.

            “I’m getting a Green Screen and dividers to put back here.” Mr. Herman was at the back of the room, moving stuff into a compartment where he stored his equipment.

            “What’s a Green Screen?” I asked.

            “It’s a system that allows you to put a different background or foreground and allows you to add neat camera effects. You can even take your own personal pictures and insert them into the system.”

            Mr. Herman then brought me a piece of paper that said “VIDEO PRODUCTIONS” on the top with a brief description stating that it was going to teach students how to make professional videos.

            “By next year, I will have twenty-three digital cameras,” he said. “I am planning to open a Video Production class. But I have to get at least forty-three people to sign up for the class or else the class won’t make it. I’m inviting you to sign up for this class because I thought you might like it.”

            I smiled and signed my name after the twenty-three students who had already signed up, thus sealing my fate for a very interesting senior year.

            The first day of my senior year, I could hardly wait. I went back to the same routine and stepped into the classroom I loved the most. Mr. Herman stood near a table in a tight white sleeveless shirt. He had a hair drier in one hand and a semi wet T-shirt in the other. He was blow-drying it.

            “ Good morning, Mr. Herman.” I could feel some blush rushing to my face and could only hope it wasn’t noticeable.

            At this point in time, I had honestly developed a crush on Mr. Herman. I had become fond of him and practically idolized him. I knew he was older than me and believe me, nothing extreme happened. It was nothing more then a close bond of friendship.

            Mr. Herman smiled and slipped the semi-wet shirt on, still blow-drying it.

            “Good morning, Daphine.”

            “What happened?” I asked as I laughed a little at him drying his shirt with a hair dryer. I had never seen anybody dry anything but hair with a hair dryer until that day.

            “Mr. Charles turned the hose on down in the mechanic shop before I picked it up and it got me all wet.” Mr. Herman chuckled.

            I laughed along with him and it began our year together.

            During Video Productions class I had the advantage. Once again, completing my work on time, I became a mega help to the students in the room who didn’t understand how to use Video Studio. Mr. Herman embarked on this class without fully knowing how to use Video Studio. So my seat went from the furthest away from him, to sitting right next to him. With my free time, I taught Mr. Herman a lot about the different things you can do with Video Studio.

            Then came the Green Screen, the most exciting new thing he ever invested in. I was proud to be one of the first to fiddle around with it. I was the object at least five studio lights were pointed at.

            “Is it working?” I asked one of my friends.

            “No, we need to make it tighter,” Kyle said, smiling as he and Heather began to pull the lime green fabric against the wall tightly and stapled it against the wall this time. The green screen was now in play and able to be used for the projects to come.

            One of the best things I remember about Video Productions class was when I took a hall pass and a camcorder and then went outside with it. This was not particularly allowed, the doors of the school automatically locked, but I used a pencil to keep it open. I then went and sat under a tree for the whole period. I was relaxing and taping birds flying around in the air. Of course, I brought the camcorder back and put it away when it was almost time to pass class.

            Near the end of the year in May, I showed Mr. Herman my Photography Course and told him that I had enrolled in it. I negotiated with Mr. Herman, and he let me do some of my Photography Course in the morning class I had with him. Then in the afternoon I would go to his room and do my class work during study hall.

            The last day of the month of May, the only thing my class in the morning time had to do was to watch a movie called “Seabiscut”. Some of the students were obnoxious and noisy to the point that Mr. Herman turned the movie off. He told them to write a story that could be turned into a movie. He then told me that I didn’t have to do it.

            So I began to write a plan for a story called “Silentity.” A story about a little girl that had previously lived in the house a young couple had purchased. A mystery surrounded the little girl’s death that screamed to be told. I finished the short form story plan of “Silentity” and gave it to Mr. Herman. Almost immediately, he was captivated by the descriptions I had written and encouraged me to begin writing.

            After this, I spent my last twenty-seven days in school writing as much of “Silentity” as I could. Showing the half I’d written to Mr. Herman, I smiled proudly. He began to read it intently.

            “This is really good, you should show this to your English teacher. You’re really good with your words.” He smiled and handed me back my story.

            Later that day I did show my English teacher the story and he also was impressed. But unfortunately, it was the end of my senior year.

            The last time I saw Mr. Herman was at my graduation. Clean cut and stylish, he wore a navy blue shirt and trousers and a maroon colored tie. He smiled and congratulated me and watched me accept my Diploma.

            There are many types of love. But I can say that I loved him as a friend. At graduation, it made me sad to leave because I knew I would miss school. Mr. Herman will now and always be one of my idols.

 ~ I miss you ~