Power Up!

In the original Mario Brothers game, Mario (or Luigi?) hit a big mushroom and grew huge.  I always thought it should be several mushrooms of varying sizes before powering up, because that’s the way it is in life.  Let me tell you about one of my first mushrooms who empowered me to become a writer.

Not used with permission, but I hope he doesn’t mind. Check it out!

Mr. “Call Me Ishmael” Irby was my Jr. High Language Arts and journalism teacher.  I’d use him as my “favorite teacher” online banking password verification prompt if his name was long enough, but alas, it isn’t.

Mr. Irby had a love of words that was infectious.  He taught us about the depressive power of clichés and the finer points of journalism.  Like spell checking (before a computer could do it for you).  I wrote an article on mandatory busing, but misspelled the word so it was “Mandatory Bussing.”  Bussing, of course, means “to kiss.”  Mr. Irby didn’t correct it because 1) he wanted to see how many people noticed, and 2) he was amused by the idea of mandatory kissing.  He was that kind of guy.

He was exactly the kind of teacher we need staffing our schools (I was fortunate; my school district had a lot of those).  Mr. Irby was the first teacher to get me excited about the power of words with several others to follow.  But he was first.

Recently I heard some news about Mr. Irby.  He’s written his first book!  He’s 73 years old now, and his first name isn’t Ishmael, its John (who knew?).  His book is Red-Tailed Rescue, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.  Click here to see it.

This isn’t a review of the book, because I just bought it yesterday and haven’t read it yet.  It is a review of the man, and he’s 5 stars all the way.

Most of us can name our mushrooms, but have you stopped to think about them lately?