I had a favorite teacher in high school, too: his name was Jeremiah “Mad Dog” Millsap. He always hated the name “Mad Dog,” a pseudonym given him by Al DeLarge during his own high school days. He demanded that everyone call him by the much more formal “Brother Millsap.” I don’t know why every adult male at that school had to be called “Brother,” because the adult females were not called “Sister” to the best of my recollection. I guess it was just a rather low-key way of instilling Submissiveness to Authority in the student body. For the purposes of this Entry, I shall refer to him as The Brother.
The Brother was intelligent. Very intelligent. Almost paralyzingly so. He could dilate on almost any subject at length and with erudition — and frequently lose the listener in a cavalcade of minutiae and detail the likes of which no man had ever heard before. He was good at algebra and trigonometry, and understood the basics of philosophy and literature. I often wondered why he chose to “chain” himself to a Fundamentalist Baptist view of the universe — of all epistemologies he could choose, that would probably be one of the most restrictive.
He recognized a kindred spirit in myself and several of my friends and encouraged us in our studies. He took a particular liking to me and gave me special treatment. He would linger over my PACEs, making certain I understood the more obscure concepts, and he would discuss any subjects that arose at length. I truly think he enjoyed being around me, because as you can tell from my previous entries, we reconnected for awhile long after High School was over and spent enjoyable times together. He was almost a comrade.
Al had much less pleasurable encounters with him. From what I understand, The Brother was the first faculty member, or indeed, member of Saint Baptist Church, to which Al professed his newfound atheism. It didn’t go over well. The Brother started including him in his sermons, talking about “this graduate who went off to college and read a bunch of philosophy books and decided he didn’t need God anymore.” This wasn’t the earliest time they had conflicted, however, I seem to recall one incident on a golf course which resulted in criminal charges for Al, and The Brother, as well as other members of the church, forced him to get up in front of the entire congregation and apologize. That was always a sticking point with Al.
I remember a few things about The Brother. He always had a tendency to call people “birds” if he got irritated enough at them. As in, “You birds better watch what you’re doing.” Sometimes the boys of the school would try to wrestle him, but he always grabbed a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, clicked it open, and started stabbing away. He said he was always afraid of Darron because “he just kept coming” despite the pain. I remember The Brother would hear about some act the students were engaging in that he considered to be sinful, and he would clutch his chest and say, “Oh, my heart. My heart hurts.”
I remember one time he was helping me with algebra, and I worked my way through a problem with astonishing speed. He scowled at me and said, “Now the only way you’ve already got that figured out is if you’re significantly smarter than me,” with a tone of absolute disbelief. He began checking the problem, his face got flustered, and he stammered, “You’re… uh… you’re significantly smarter than me.” I was always shocked that he admitted it so openly instead of trying to back away from it.
There are also several funny stories of him at the various State and National Conventions, but I believe I have already written about those in previous entries.
In addition to being principal of Saint Christian Academy, he was also the Assistant Pastor at Saint Baptist Church. A lot of people considered him to be next in line for Pastor. The only problem was… he gave rather “boring” sermons. Eventually he got sidelined in both the church and the school. Brother Norm decided not to retire after all, and brought on somebody else as Assistant Pastor. The Brother was demoted from Principal of the School and relegated to teaching only one of the classes. I thought it was a back-handed insult to his honor and tried to misguidedly console him, but I learned (and detailed in previous entries) that The Brother accepted a lot of these denigrations willingly and has no hard feelings now.
I haven’t seen him in a long time. I really should look him up again the next time I go to [REDACTED].