Someone with the last name Slater popped up on my social media feed this week. Meta said we had one mutual friend. I reached out to that friend asking if the Slater on social media was THE Mr. Slater. He confirmed they were one in the same.

Mr. Slater was somewhat of a legend at East Forsyth High School. A non-conformist type teacher. The kind who always talked to himself while teaching and pacing around the classroom with a billion ideas in his brilliant brain. He was even known to rip out the intercom because there were too many announcements… the intercom was a distraction.

I took a writing class with him my senior year. Now, I will never be a Pulitzer prize winning writer, but Mr. Slater made me a much better writer and for that I will always be grateful. His signature way of giving feedback on your writing assignments – via cassette tape. You gave him a blank one with your draft, and he recorded his feedback on the cassette tape as he was reading your paper. Now, his feedback could be harsh, but I LOVED popping that cassette into the tape player and listening to his edits. For some random reason, I remember one paper I wrote had the word extremely spelled incorrectly. In true Kristan form, I was consistent with this misspelling, and by the end of the paper he said “please learn how to spell the damn word extremely…. it has an e before the ly.” Now I am left to wonder why I would use the word extremely multiple times in a paper…. but that would be a question for 18 year old semi-histrionic Kristan.

Almost all of my friends from those high school years kept their tapes. I kept mine until there wasn’t a way to listen to them anymore. The last time I packed them up, though was in our family attic when my parents were selling my childhood home. My cassette tape collection from the 90s made me look like a very angry lesbian. My collection featured The Indigo Girls (remember this post??), Melissa Etheridge, and Edie Brickell and The New Bohemians. The only tape that confirmed I was not an angry lesbian was the mixed tape from my first high school love that featured Faithfully by Journey (Jesus, I might throw up). There was a section of my tape collection devoted to Mr. Slater’s cassettes. I listened to a few in the attic that day, and his feedback was kinder and kinder as I made my way through them. I equate this with me becoming a better writer. I wish I had kept my cassette tapes like so many of my friends did. But I do have the memories and the ability to spell extremely correctly… even without spell check. Thanks Mr. Slater.

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