Miss Bruton Was Right

Once upon a time I was in high school. A shocker, I know. Miss Bruton taught a variety of classes, psychology, AP US history and any other history class that the school needed her to teach, coached the soccer team, and helped "coach" the scholars' bowl teams. One of my brothers friends recruited me to join the junior varsity scholars' bowl team where I first met Miss Bruton. The next year I had her for a history class. And the following year I had her for 3 semesters worth of classes--psych and AP history. She was a delightful teacher who sought to understand her students and quickly became one of my favorite teachers. (I remember one day I snapped at her during class. She pulled me aside after class not because she was really upset about being snapped at, but because she could tell I was really upset about something because it was out of character for me to act that way. I cried. She listened. It was a nice moment.) One day while Miss Bruton was covering psychological disorders, schizophrenia to be exact, she mentioned that many mental illnesses begin showing symptoms during the college years and that while she was learning about all the illnesses she couldn't help wonder if this tick or that moodiness was a manifestation of some neurosis or another. Bruton mentioned that if we were to ever take an abnormal psychology class we would begin to wonder if the other people in our lives or ourselves were coming down with the strange diseases we were studying. She was right. I cannot count how many times in the past few days I have wondered if someone is schizophrenic or if I'm hearing voices in my head....