Olivia Parker, San Bernardino High School’s theatre teacher, talks about how they celebrate the holidays and their odd situation with bears.

Daniella Slater: What was the weirdest thing that happened to you?

Olivia Parker: I’ve had multiple bears inside of my house. Not just visiting my yard, but inside my house. I have a bear paw print on my wall of the bear climbing back out the window.

DS: Do you have a specific story?

OP: The more recent one, the bear pulled the screen off the front living room window, and it was trying to go to the kitchen to get to the trash, but I have a dog gate like a baby gate. It’s too fat to fit through the gate so it got stuck. It started freaking out inside the house. I heard it and I had to go chase it out of the house. Three of my cats were really scared, but my one cat was sitting on the ground watching it.

DS: What do you often look forward to?

OP: What do I look forward to? Christmas. Santa Claus. I love Santa. Santa is my hero.

DS: What do you usually do on Christmas?

OP: I bake a lot of cookies for all these people. And I love buying presents for other people. I think it’s really fun to find stuff that you can’t find in stores. You know what I mean? Something you have to research to buy something weird or unique or special. I do stockings for my family, including my six animals. They all get stockings of presents. We decorate the yard and I win for Best Yard Decoration because I’m that person and we do Christmas caroling. It snows where I live so we have snowball fights. Stuff like that. Walks in the snow and I make the whole Christmas dinner. I make it myself. Oh! and I watch all the trashy Hallmark movies and Lifetime movies. All the Christmas ones. The real good ones. Falalala lifetime, that’s my favorite.

DS: Do you have a specific Christmas that was your favorite?

OP: Yeah, a couple of years ago we got snowed in and we couldn’t leave for two days. The snow was like five feet high so it’s locked in all the cars and all the roads. 

DS: What did you do on those days? 

OP: We just stayed and played in the snow with the dogs. My dogs like snow.

DS: What’s your goal in life?

OP: To live somewhere I love.

DS: Do you have a specific place?

OP: Forks Washington, but anywhere anywhere on that island.

DS: What do you like about that place?

OP: It’s the wettest place in the continental US. It gets an average of 120 inches of rainfall a year. San Bernardino gets 16 inches a year, Forks gets 180.  Maybe there’s vampires in the woods. I don’t know. And Bigfoot. I’m going to find them both. We already made a goal. I said once a month, once a month, we’re going out to the forest and we’re camping for the weekend and then we’re not stopping until we find Bigfoot.

DS: What’s one thing that made an impact on your life?

OP: My sophomore English Teacher. He saved my life

DS: Can you tell me a bit about him?

OP: His name was Tysese. He taught English in a way that made it creative and interesting and fun and not just always about writing papers, but about understanding how language matters and how it affects other people.