Some years ago, when the trees had grown small buds and there was the first breath of spring in the air, I saw Mr D, a teacher from my old all-boys secondary school.
Geography, I think, he taught. Maybe Classics. He never taught me directly but he was part of the furniture at my school - once a Grammar School but deregulated to public status. It was staffed by a range of mildly eccentric but dedicated middle aged men that belonged in Edwardian novels. Mr D was a small, quiet man who walked as if having a constant battle with gravity or a gale pushing him from behind. The kind of teacher that fills black holes, staying the same for years as the school evolves, fossilized from a fading time of scholarly seriousness. Suddenly I realized – here is a man who never once got angry, never raised his voice, never appeared frustrated or disappointed or disgusted - all of the common emotions when teaching teenage boys, many of them taller than him. I had seen him from time to time, walking the streets in his grey coat, in our joint home town of Epsom, his eyebrows gaining the hair lost on his head. Every time he appeared a little older, the walking style more stuttering, his face more lined, the eyelids drooping deeper into old lore. On this particular day I was shocked: he was now an old man. His body shook softly, his face hung decrepit, the eyelids drooping as if he was sleepwalking. I gulped down a gasp. His decline was proof of how far I had come from being a teenager, how quickly time flies outside those forever-school days. I felt angry for him, for this passive stumble into the night - no raging for him. But perhaps he was happy; there was no way of telling. Mr D passed and I lost site of him amongst the other, much taller people in the street. On the way home I noticed the opening buds on the trees again but spring did not move me. I breathed in and tasted autumn. Teachers, like your parents, should never be allowed to grow old.
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AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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