Did I ever mention that three years of my elementary school education and all four years of my high school ordeal were spent in Japan? Oh. Sorry — I could've sworn I had said it somewhere.

And no, I don't/can't speak Japanese. In high school, my mother convinced me to take Spanish. She said I would have the opportunity to use it more. Of course upon leaving Japan, we moved to Hawaii. Spanish, anyone? Didn't think so.

My fifth grade teacher at Sagamihara Elementary School was Mr. Watkins. He was probably the first gay man I'd ever met. Or at least knew I was meeting. I'm sure I'd met others, but they just weren't so obvious.

The first day of school that year, he wore red polyester pants (all the rage in 1972), a pair of white leather, perfectly-polished shoes, a white leather belt (gold buckle), a red-white-and-blue vertically striped long-sleeved shirt (with gold cuff-links), and a thick blue tie with bright white stars on it. Quite the patriot that day.

And his hair... do you remember the movie Steel Magnolias? Remember when Sally Field's character is describing her hair as a "brown helmet"? That was Mr. Watkin's hair. It was a comb-over, though not yet at the point where it's so painfully obvious that his part starts where his left ear ends. It appeared to be teased and very sprayed. It was long-ish, just touching the top of his shirt collar. Very coifed. Very Bobby Goldsboro.

He spoke very crisply. That's the best way to describe it. No lisp... just a lot of crisp. His walk was the clincher. Very tight in the butt. Shoulders back, head up, cocked slightly to the side. Arms swing — don't over swing! And the arms swing from the shoulder... not at the elbow. Hands are open, wrists just loose enough to allow the hands to look almost like wing-tips on a bird. He floated along the old, worn wooden floors of the school.

One day, I got the inspiration to create "shoe art". This is where you take your Elmer's Glue and squirt a large glob of it onto the bottom of your sneaker. You then take your right index finger (or left — whichever is appropriate) and smear said glob evenly across the surface, filling each crevice. Ideally, you sit and bide your time in class while this dries. Once dried, you pick one corner of the dried glue up with your fingernail, then slowly and carefully peel the finished product off. Voila! An impression of the bottom of your sneaker skillfully cast in Elmer's Glue.

Unfortunately for the Art World, Mr. Watkins' eagle-eye caught sight of my attempt at creation. I smelled his cologne before I saw his shadow and then the tips of his shoes as I worked on my shoe-glue.

"What do you think you're doing, young lady?" He insisted on reminding me of my gender on a daily basis.

I just looked up at him, my mouth opening and closing, with no sound or apparent intelligence forthcoming.

"You just get up and go straight to the office, young lady." Again, the reminder.

"Bu-" I stammered... I knew I needed to explain the inherent beauty in what I was doing, and also knew that there was something wrong with getting up at this particular moment.