I think it’s just a natural law that children of a certain age have to fall in love with one of their teachers. It tends to be right in the spring awakening period of junior high, too; any younger and teacher is still just a substitute mommy, and any older and there are plenty of fellow students to write mushy mental love notes to.

For most males of the heterosexual persuasion who passed through Thomas Q. Dobbs Junior High, that teacher-crush role was completely spoken for thanks to Miss Lori Finivedi. Now, years removed, when I look back on her photo in the yearbook, she doesn’t seem all that interesting–pretty, certainly, but without any of the supermodel characteristics that fledgling hormones or a desk-seated perspective can bring. Her lectures were scattershot, with none of the prim organization that Mr. La France or Mrs. Knusson brought–nevertheless, every male was as enraptured as our female classmates were bored.

This led, of course, to fierce competition among boys in that class to impress Miss Lori Finivedi. and no competition was more fierce or more closely contested than the annual United States Diorama Map competition.