Greg Bub, Nick Bub, and Cam Bub

When I first graduated from college I got a job teaching PE at a pretty good sized Christian School in California. I was hired to teach Kindergarten through 2nd grade PE. It was only three days a week but it was the worst job I ever had. I learned that I am not cut out for working with kids that age. I wanted to shoot myself in the foot about half way through the year. I had had ENOUGH. I am still tainted to this day. I can only be around kids that age for about five minutes before I get a nervous tic. One of the upsides to the job was I got to run around and play every day, the other upside was Greg. Greg was a kindergartner in the "special class." Greg's classmates were, for lack of a better word, insane. Greg was a diagnosed mute. He would not talk to adults. His teacher warned me of this, and told me if I needed an answer from him for some reason to go through Nick, his buddy who would talk for him. The first day of class, Greg growled at me. Not a mean growl, just kind of a friendly RAWR.

I treated him like the rest of the kids. When he was a little punk, he got time out, when he was good, I let him know it. I started calling him Greg Bub and I called Nick, Nick Bub. I'm not real sure where that came from, but when I would call him that he would grin and give me a rawr. One day after Christmas break, I was handing out frisbees to groups of two. Greg and Nick came up and I asked them what color frisbee they wanted. Greg looked right at me and said, "Blue! Blue!" I handed him a blue frisbee, and they went on their merry way. I never made a big deal of Greg talking to me, but from that day on we would have conversations. He started calling me Cam Bub.

I got to meet his mom towards the end of the year at Field Day. She went on to tell me that I was one of the 7 adults in Greg's life that he talked to. All we could figure is that I was probably in the most "non-threatening" environment at school and all we did was play. I look pretty young for my age so that could have been part of it. Greg's teacher ended up asking me if I would give him his end of the year oral test. He was a very smart kid. He just didn't want to talk. He must have had some amazing willpower to not talk to his teacher all year long, not one word.