There have been few days in my life that in some way I have not thought of this big and loud man of whom I was a bit afraid of at times. To begin with I have been addicted to pizza because Brother Stanley would walk the corridors of St Edward's High School (a boarding school in Austin, Texas) on weekend evenings looking for volunteers who might want to go for a pizza. He taught me biology. In a test that would not pass muster in our frog-friendly times he told us one day, "You are each going to open up a frog and sew it back together. If your frog dies last, you will win this box of Anthony & Cleopatra cigars. Considering that few of us smoked or would have been allowed to smoke cigars on campus, we were excited. I won the box and I have no memory of what I did with it. Brother Stanly insisted that all of us buy and use a newfangled circular slide rule. It was a breeze to use and I have kept mine all these years.
But it was in grade 12 physics that Brother Stanley marked me for life. I found his class too difficult and I was afraid that by taking it my very high average (96.8 %) might suffer. I told him I was going to quit his class. His little talk (after he allowed me to quit and which I did) was, "Alex it is difficult to quit but as you quit more often you will gain experience and you will find that it becomes easier as you go. Soon you will be an expert quitter."
