My favorite math teacher, Mishter Guffey, passed away Monday. What they don't have in that obit is how he taught me to play softball wearing his blue, tight old-man pants with the thread worn around his wallet, how he taught us derivatives like none other, how he'd poke fun at me for being a whiz at solitaire when I'd just scored 100% on one of his tests- the only one in the class and me a year younger than the rest of his students. That he was the first at UH to have a whiteboard instead of chalk and was fiercely protective of his markers, keeping them usable for as long as possible. He yelled at me when I didn't know how to slide and sort went shoulder and butt first into home plate at a softball game about how I was supposed to get down and slide and completely took my mind off of how much my (broken) tailbone hurt. I was really sad when he left UH the year before I graduated, but happy that I'd gotten to have him instead of the string of replacement teachers they brought in. So here's to you Mishter Guffey, for furthering my love of math.