Mr. Johnson
About Me:
Hi, my name’s Gary Johnson. I’m a libro, or maybe a cancer, or an onyx. I really don’t know. My birthday is in June, but before the solstice. I might not know my astrology, but I sort of know astronomy. For instance, I know that the earth is round. I know that it orbits around the Sun in a slightly elliptical orbit (e≈0.01671). I know the Sun makes up one of the foci of rotation and the other focus is some arbitrary point in space (I wonder what is there?). I know that summer is when the Sun is further away and winter is when the Sun is closer. I know that on the equinox the Sun rises perfectly in the east everywhere on Earth. I know there are two to five solar eclipses every year, but seeing totality is heralded as a once-in-a-lifetime experience (probably because most of them are over the ocean).
While this all fascinates me, it is not my main interest. What I like most are long walks on the beach (preferably without sand), warm summer nights (where you can feel the warmth of the sun), and a perfectly clean and organized workshop (with no missing or broken tools/equipment). My favorite food is perfectly roasted cauliflower. I mean have you had it? It’s amazing. The crispy florets, the tender stalks, the olive oil and spices. It’s my daughter’s favorite food as well (she’s 5). She will often cry out “More Cauliflower!” Our cauliflower budget is large.
So what’s the lesson here? Other than astronomy and that vegetables are delicious. I think it’s about things that are fleeting, perfect things in an imperfect world, finding what makes you happy and hanging on to it, or maybe most importantly, and indirectly, kindness. Consider that empty space that holds such a gravitational hold over the Earth. It has no mass or gravitational pull in and of itself, yet it is a focus just as much as the sun. Every once in a while, a piece of floating space dust passes through this point, and just for a moment, it feels powerful. Be the sun, be the strength that allows somebody else to feel powerful. And for the love of everything, clean up!
Foothill High School
4375 Foothill Rd
Pleasanton, CA 94588
(925) 461-6600
Last Year Bio
I am excited to be starting the 2022-2023 school year. It's my first year as an engineering teacher. Sorry, it's my first year exclusively as an engineering teacher. This transition is going to be a little strange. However, we are starting the new year, in the new building, and for this I am excited. This is going to be a building year, as they will be spending the entire year building a new building feet (5 feet) from my current room. I expect it to be a pleasant, peaceful year. For those that remember the constant grinding noises from our current facilities construction, I'm sure your expectations are the same as mine. Current timeline is construction September through March, and again, we all expect them to stick perfectly to the schedule.
As you can see, I am extremely optimistic about this year. So much so, that I will share a little bit about myself. My name is Gary Johnson, and I live in the California Bay Area. I am somewhere between 25 and 50 years old. I am proficient with typing, I know how to make a spreadsheet, and I sometimes zone off in my own thoughts. If you ever ask me a question, and it looks like I didn't hear you, one of two things happened. Either I didn't hear you, or I haven't heard you yet. I know this later option sounds weird, as the speed of sound is roughly 13,503.9 in/sec and my ears are likely only 20-60 inches away from you, so that took between1.5 and 4.5ms, but my brain puts things in the queue, and I get to it when I get to it, as if I needed more ram. In either case, I would recommend asking again once you are certain you have my attention. I am sorry I am like this; I would chalk it up to old hardware and recent system updates forcing obsoletion, but alas, I have always been like this.
I am not a robot.
This is going to be a great year.
Last-last Year Bio
Ok, this one is going to be true. Shocking. I'm in my 10th year teaching at Foothill. Crazy, I know, I'm getting old, well older. My life has been turned upside down from when I first started here. Today, as I am writing, it is August 4th at 12:20pm. Last night, I played Ultimate, as I do as often as I am able to. Evenings are the best time to play, as the kids are in bed (yes there are 2 now), well at least that is the idea. At 10 pm, right as Ultimate was ending, I receive a text from my wife saying the older one is awake and she is going in. I get home, everything's ok, she is back asleep, so I take a shower and go to bed, except I can't sleep, not because I'm not tired, believe me, I am, but because I just ran around for an hour. 2:14 am, back in her room, it's my turn now, leave 8 minutes later. 3:04 am, the younger one wakes up, but my wife takes that one. 5:45 am, she's awake again, crying, uncontrollably, because her "rain sounds" turned off. Amazingly, I sleep with her until 6:45 am even though her "green light" turns on at 6:15 am when she typically pops awake ready to go.
I eat breakfast. Half dozen strawberries, half a banana, spoonful of peanut butter, Nature's Path Organic Pumpkin Seed + Flax Granola, and oat milk. I eat almost the same thing almost every morning. I brush my teeth while entertaining my daughter, brush her teeth while she watches "Mouse a Cookie," get dressed hoping my son doesn't roll off the bed. Thank my yesterday self, really my wife, for remembering to pack my daughter's lunch last night, buckle in the kids, and get out the door, only 5 minutes behind schedule.
Today was the first day of needing to get out the door at a specific time in order to get to work on time. I'm calling it a success. Only 180ish left to go this year. It is now 12:40pm, as always, I do the things I don't need to do before the things I do need to do, but at least this one only took 20 minutes (well 21 minutes now).
Previous Bio
Last year was a really rough year for me. By late 2019, I was so stressed about all of the work I needed to do, that I decided to do what I always do, make my life way more challenging in the short term in order to make it easier in the long term, so I decided to clone myself. Unfortunately, I knew very little about biology, so I started with an obvious first source, watch Rick and Morty. After that, I dove head first into Wikipedia and came up with a working idea. After a few weeks of diligent work, I succeeded...ish. I had a clone: he could walk around, he could talk, but he wasn't very sharp, he was clumsy, and he had some serious cellular degeneration. I figured it was good enough, and it would get me a break until summer, so I left town in early January and went to live with my family in the woods, completely cut off from society in every way.
Although living off the land was very challenging, it was also simpler. Every day there were three tasks: get food, get water, get shelter. I felt like Matt Damon in the Martian with my ability to adapt to new challenges, while at the same time I felt like Matt Damon in Interstellar, like I was able to take a really long nap in a sensory deprivation pod. Making life so simple was truly regenerative. Well, I just got back to my house in the few days before school started, and I am super excited to get back to teaching. What did I miss!?!
Old Bio
As Mr. Johnson finally sat down at his desk after a seemingly endless day, he let out an exasperated sigh, for this day was in fact no day at all because the world was now cast in perpetual darkness, and despite giving his best effort, Mr. Johnson was not able to reverse it.
24 hours earlier… 4:12 pm
Mr. Johnson was just about to walk out the door when he noticed a group of hooded teenagers walking back onto campus through his classroom window. They were pushing a cart filled with outdated electronics equipment, likely taken without permission from the recycling scrap pile. This is where the memory goes a little fuzzy because the next thing Mr. Johnson remembers are faint voices, blurry vision, and waking up on the ground in the storage room, just as the door to the classroom slammed shut, and he was left alone in the quiet. Everything seemed the same, except for the cart full of junk was now in his room, and most of the equipment was now in pieces. The one common thread between all the junk was the lack of capacitors from any of the equipment.
Just then the lights flickered, followed by a loud explosion and the fire alarm started blaring.
Mr. Johnson rushed outside to find that every car alarm was contributing to the cacophony, and a huge fire was blazing in the middle of the quad. This is when Mr. Johnson looked up and saw the moon breaking apart. As an avid researcher of ridiculous situations, such as the great works by Randall Munroe, Mr. Johnson didn’t know exactly what was about to happen, but he knew it would be bad, but unlike the works by Randall Munroe, the remainder of this story will not be based on science.
The large portions of the moon remained in orbit, but many of the small fragments came down toward earth. As they caught the upper atmosphere, Mr. Johnson saw the most beautiful site he had ever seen, thousands of shooting stars streaking across the night sky. Unfortunately, as the now smaller moon fragments hit the ground all over the world, an enormous dust cloud engulfed the globe, obscuring the sky, and beginning the endless night.
Mr. Johnson immediately called the NSA with his cell phone, as his classroom phone has a broken speaker and you can barely hear anything. Agents arrived a few minutes later and quickly learned that the fire in the quad was a result of a nuclear fusion reactor experiment gone wrong. They looked everywhere for the students that performed the experiment, but they could not be found; it is assumed that they will now be in hiding for the remainder of their lives, and they and their family’s lives will be forever ruined.
As the world woke up the following morning, the expected chaos began. Mr. Johnson did his best to help calm the student population as they arrived at school, but nothing seemed to work, and by the end of the day, the administration decided to shut the school indefinitely. This is when Mr. Johnson finally sat down at his desk, completely exhausted and defeated.
4:14 pm
Mr. Johnson comes too on the floor of his classroom, apparently he had tripped over a textbook and knocked himself out right after he had seen the students coming onto campus. It had all been a dream, but now the important part began. Mr. Johnson quickly rushed outside to find that group of students, turns out they were his engineering students, and Mr. Johnson shut them down. Although they still do not agree with him, creating a nuclear fusion reactor with scrap electronic components using plans found on the internet inside of a homemade vacuum chamber is a bad idea. With all life choices you must weigh the pros and cons. Best case scenario, you see a measurable change on a computer screen from your internal sensors; worst case scenario, the end of the world. Unfortunately, this story is almost entirely true.
TL;DR Mr. Johnson trips on textbooks left out by students. Mr. Johnson’s classroom phone is broken. Mr. Johnson’s engineering students take old electronics from the scrap pile, scavenge them for parts, and leave the now more junky junk in his classroom. Mr. Johnson had to prevent his students from attempting to make a homemade nuclear fusion reactor with plans found on the internet.
Really Old Bio:
There once was a king, a king in the south
that lived in a beautiful, foothilled region.
He ruled because he was oldest, well almost,
and those younger formed his legion
His Kingdom was full of almost unlimited resources
and his legion had some sorta-wonderful makers.
They made and they made all day in the dark,
yet when it came to the job of cleaning, nobody were takers.
The king traveled his land in search of a profit.
A profit that knew how to clean and to organize.
So he turned to the leaders within his domain;
still nothing got cleaner, while making stayed on the rise.
Thy king decided drastic measures would begin.
A cleaning regime he would now implement,
and the shop would be closed until this occurred.
And thus I have written my most true bio yet.
Super Old Bio:
In the summer of 2018, I had a kid. She was born on July 15th at 11:20 am weighing 6 lbs 1 oz. She is such a happy baby, and I love her so much. During a few of the early weeks of the 18-19 school year, I used some of my accrued sick days to take paternal leave to bond with my child. In total, I took 4 weeks of leave. Except none of this is true. The alleged 4 weeks of my absence was actually a contrived plan by the school counselors and administrators to remove these students from a communal delusion that they have built for themselves. The truth being that I do not exist. Over the past 7 years, students at Foothill have coped with the stresses and pressures of being a high school student by envisioning a young, intelligent, enthusiastic math and engineering teacher to set them on the path to a better future. Students are in need of a better world, where they can learn math through playing video games, turn couches into autonomous robots, and sail the seven seas in boats made of cardboard. These outlandish ideas, of course, are contrived by the minds of desperate high school students stressed about their futures. During the experiment, students were found hiding in storage rooms, laying on the storage racks as if they were bunk beds, and complaining about their lack of a super powerful laser that is capable of cutting through wood. Unfortunately, the experiment to remove students from their own delusions failed, and it was determined that the best course of action is to let students play out this scenario. Hopefully, when these students graduate from high school, they can move on without the support of their imaginary teacher.
Really Really Old Bio:
In 1993 my worldview changed and the plan that I had established for myself went in a radical, new direction. I began training 19 hours a day; my mind, body, and spirit needed to be in perfect shape and harmony if I were to be successful and survive in this dangerous new endeavor. I climbed to the highest reaches of the Himalayas searching for answers. I study numerous texts trying to read between the lines for the clues I would need to finally achieve my dream. After obtaining numerous degrees from multiple prestigious universities, I thought I was ready to begin. During the summer of 2015, the roller coaster ride that had been the past 22 years reached its climax, and an instant later left me feeling empty inside. I walked out of that theater having seen for the first time my dream career of Dinosaur Trainer being actualized by my hero Chris Pratt only to have my colleague and now enemy, Joseph Friesen, turn to me and say: “Hey, you know dinosaurs are extinct.” Learning now, after all this time, that the Jurassic Park franchise has been lying to me, I turned to the only career option I could, education. My new goal: to make sure no young mind falls victim to another's fiction.
Really Super Old Bio:
Born on the distant planet of Krypton, Mr. Johnson is one of the most unstoppable forces the universe has ever seen. He's got out of this world athleticism, godly Ultimate Frisbee skills, knowledge beyond his years, and more patience than Jesus himself. His only weakness is kryptonite, which exists on this 3rd Rock from the star we call the Sun in a gaseous state Earthlings call oxygen.
Super Really Old Bio:
Mr. Johnson suffers from a rare blood disorder that was first seen when he was born, 362 years ago. Since this was the first occurrence of this disorder, it was naturally named Gary Johnson's Disease. Although Mr. Johnson is still alive and well, it does have one terrible symptom; it forces the patient to be awesome all the time. In fact, Mr. Johnson's disease is so advanced that it has forced him to stay 25 years old for the last 337 years (when he originally turned 25 back in 1676) because 25 is the most awesome age. All of these years of being 25 has really taken its toll on Mr. Johnson, for instance his knees are beginning to suffer (probably the only true part of this bio). Although his body is frail, his mind is sharp and wise.
Super Super Old Bio:
After many years of being a super hero, Mr. Johnson decided to hang up his cape and give up his crime fighting ways and focus on his second passion, being a dare devil astronaut, but after breaking every bone in his body, Mr. Johnson underwent full reconstructive surgery and ended up looking like a 24 year old. He decided that this time around his life would be significantly more calm, so he decided to teach math at a bay area high school and the rest is history.