What happens if what you're good at is something you don't want to do?

My friend Mick -- my closest friend of going on 45 years now -- expressed two career goals when we were growing up together in Virginia. He wanted to play center field for the Yankees and barring that, he wanted to be the world's first pregnant man.

Two lofty goals.

Mick wasn't quite as iconoclastic as John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler character in "Say Anything:"

<em>"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."</em>

[caption id="attachment_232" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The Wizard of Mick?"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/lollipop.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-232" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/lollipop-300x240.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="240" /></a>[/caption]

He didn't want to work in an office, though, and he absolutely did not want to be a teacher. More than once when we were younger, I heard him express the classic line that "those who can't do, teach."

I usually added the Woody Allen line, "And those who can't teach, teach gym."

Well, when Mick was in his mid twenties, he loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. Hills, that is. The only problem was that he hadn't found any bubblin' crude to finance the trip.

After sporadic successes trying to become the next Robert Towne or William Goldman, Mick wound up teaching screenwriting at two Southern California community colleges.

By all accounts, he's a great teacher -- on the Mr. Chips level. His students adore him and his classes are usually oversubscribed. On the rate-your-professor sites, he gets almost unanimous praise. He's even someone of a fatherly sex symbol to the young girls -- and maybe even some of the young boys -- in his classes.

I took his screenwriting class one year, and even though I knew him very well and understood all his tricks and gimmicks, I was very impressed by the way he kept things moving and kept people involved. It was a weird semester, I suppose. He actually had to let down gently one woman who wanted him to provide genetic material so that she could have a baby.

Now<em> that's</em> a great teacher.

[caption id="attachment_234" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Brokemick Mountain?"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/brokemick.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-234" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/brokemick-300x272.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="272" /></a>[/caption]

The two pictures included with this post were created by one of his more recent students for Facebook. Mick is a serious person, so these pictures have certainly embarrassed him. But he has shown a good sense of humor about it, whether it's his insertion into a picture of the Lollipop Guild from the "Wizard of Oz" or into the Ennis role in "Brokeback Mountain."

We kid because we love.

His student, Chris Leavins, clearly has a lot of imagination, and despite all the kidding, it's obvious that he has a great deal of respect for Mick.

As I said, he's a great teacher with a lot of heart.