Buffalo Rider

I just saw one of my old high school teachers get run over by a buffalo. That's what became of his character in the movie Buffalo Rider. I was watching the Rifftrax version. The movie was worse than I expected. It got a PG rating, apparently for scenes of terrible things happening to animals and three or four homicides. At least the human deaths were simulated.

My teacher got third billing in the closing credits. As far as I know, he's retired, I would guess in his early 70's.

I mentioned this in another entry. He told the class I was in that he had been in a movie over the summer. But this was a huge class packed with sophomores. It was our first term of high school and we didn't know each other and we didn't know him. No one wanted to be first to enthuse over it. So we just sat there like lumps, not showing the slightest curiosity.

Some of my memories of him:

One time, I saw him walking down the hall alone. He briefly gestured as if he were talking to someone.

He started to say "Jupiter", realized he was talking about Greek, not Roman gods and changed to "Zeus", so it sounded like "Juice".

An idiot kid was mad at him because he apparently reported some of the kid's friends who were drinking beer in the parking lot before attempting to drive home. Sheeland told him he didn't need to justify anything to him and the kid shut up.

He directed a Shakespeare play. I thought it was fine, but I heard him tell another teacher he wouldn't try to put on a play in such a short time again.

One day, he talked about how he borrowed somebody's Harley Davidson. The engine died at a stoplight. He had to kick start it and it wasn't working, and I think he said the thing fell over and was so heavy he had trouble standing it up again, or maybe he just had to push it out of the street. I don't remember. It was forty years ago.

He revealed that teachers talk among themselves about student papers. That's how they discovered that two kids turned in identical papers in different classes. He read part of the two papers in class to show that they were hip to our shenanigans. The paper was very bad which is probably why they were sitting around the teacher's lounge laughing at it.

One time, he showed a picture of an elaborate tomb in Egypt but couldn't remember what it was. I tried to tell him that it was the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, but it was the first time I ever tried to utter the word "Hatshepsut" and didn't say it right. I can say it effortlessly now.

I debated whether to put his name in this entry. What if he googled himself? Would it make him feel like a celebrity, or like someone was posting cruel memories of times he may have been slightly embarrassed at work?