At the school where I was going there was also a Sport’s school, with different departments.
How Maramures Explorer got in league A with the volleyball section the team wished a valuable farm of players from whom they can regenerate their batch. In this way a department for volleyball, at that school, with huge perspective, was built taking in account the fact that by that time the high school was five years old.
A teacher with a volleyball teaching line was allocated there, a very capable artisan. His only annoyance was that the height he had was not quite …height…He was a short man, whom him self considered as a handicap for a volleyball man, with a permanent feeling of inferiority. From this reason he wished to show that for once in his life he could be the best, the biggest, if by his stature he couldn’t make this step, at least through the results of his work to grow up.
I have to admit that the guy knew his job well. His pupils were in the third year of high school and they were already professional’s volleyball players. At the recruitment selection when they built the team, the shortest volleyball player was 1, 95 meters height and the matter was growing to better things.
This man we are talking about now it seemed to have a mustache and his name was the same as of a Parisian tap house. Not Moulin Rouge, but as famous as it. I miss it right now, I might remember meanwhile.
The guy was the best from the team. The fact that he could take his coach at his “armhole” allowed him to be rude with him and his arbiters. Exceptions that have taken him at collecting a few red cards while on the field.
That particular teacher, the coach, as my mate, he confess to me. He might not do this with the thought of receiving any suggestions from me, but only for the fact of telling his own sorrow to someone. Obviously I listened to what he had to say, but his sorrow was continuously. I suggested a solution. He could get him out from the batch for one or two games.

The first game was with the Andrei Muresanu High School from Dej, a team that was on the first place from the group and if they “get over them” they got the chance to go at the finals for the country. In this way the teacher/coach dream would become true. How could you afford not taking in your team the best player, at the hardest game you participated? Once introduced, he has done his “number” and because of him, of his boldness, he was kicked out. The game was played with five members. It was obviously a lost game and with this all teachers’ dreams faded away. From now all the actions that would be taken will be out of time. The teacher tolerated more of his actions at the team, but in the time he was playing in the batch their relationship was at the edge.
I haven’t followed up from nearby, anymore, my working mate’s work, since his incompleteness also affected me and the real fact was that I could not stand the fact that a pupil affords to “play” his teacher after his own will.
At a banquet of my old students, at the meeting of the teen years ending high school, one of my old students, a good friend of the one we are talking about, told us the following:
– Teacher, as you may know, me and Mircea were best friends and we made all kinds of stupid things together. You also may remember that with the learning thing we didn’t quite strive. After finishing high school we gained our families faith that “funded” us with good money and we left for Petrosani “to go to university”. We left two weeks earlier than the enlistment started and we spent two heavenly weeks. We managed to know all the bars and restaurants for the Valley. I think it was a day before the closing of the enlistments office when Mircea received a phone call, at the hostel, from his mother. Shortly, she was very agitated, she tried to get to him for many time, to receive news from him and she couldn’t find him at the phone not even at night. Practically, she was only asking him the usual stuff about the enlisting, at what department he enlisted, how many people applied for it, how he felt, if he passed the sports test … As hooligans as we were I never thought Mircea will be so affected from this phone call. Practically, the next day he went to enlist himself. We showed up at the sports test, an assistant gave us a ticket on which it was also indicated the room where the exam will take place.
Highly thrilled we attended the first written essay. The whole thing was incredible. We thought that even if we tell all this to someone they still won’t believe me.

The assistant that “examined” us at the sports attempt confused us or maybe we got ourselves in an unknown observance, at the rugby players’ admission. In the examination room there was an assistant that was telling us jokes, sorts of happening from different games were recalled, what else, the admission exam, obviously of Mircea too, was a true show. By that time God was being denied as he wasn’t a P.C.R. member, but I realized that God gave me the chance of a lifetime.
I don’t need to tell you that in Petrosani were the hardest admissions, where the first students from our high school could not get to the Institute. Seeing that both of us were admitted we thought in not missing the chance of our life and started to learn, in such way that all our colleges that have borne our stupidity for five years in high school were amazed. Now Mircea became a director and could not come, to relate the story of his life adventure, but I can still tell you that both, he and I became more careful with the people around us, more conscientious and we became to be more faithful persons. I am sure that God gave us this unique chance and from two “lost” people, we became humans through all humans, and believe me that all I missed in my teaching at high school, I have striven to regain in the Institute, in such way I received my high school colleges consideration of a man and of group.
– As we can see there are people that still remember the good things that they received from their home education.
– Precisely. An important thing in education is honesty. Compromises only bring along other compromises and among it the attenuation of lack of discipline. Anyways, I congratulate these two boys, this man who had the power to “go back” at his mother’s voice. Mister Buia, earlier we had a “reference” over Bacovia, according what he was reciting in his writes, said the other guest, from the poetry a feeling of insularism gets over, of sadness and even agony. These depressive states of mind seem even stranger for a man that is known to be an airy character, how Minulescu was, and the man that defined his lines as: the sadness with all the useless life tortures. It’s true that we all go away and there are things that get us all sad, maybe because in this substitute of life we feel manipulated like some robots. I don’t want the dissection of sadness because right now it is huddled inside us, following us everywhere. But form what you related, happenings from this humbling village, I would say that only on one street, in fact it is the only one, the simple man appears, the autochthon of these lands that doesn’t leave him self stricken by the life’s tidiness, doesn’t fall into mesmerism, but for I would say that it is a pleasure to discover that each person is full of energy that, with the kindness of his soul, manages to go on with the adversities and happiness that life gives him, and in dignity.