It’s 8.15, it’s Sunday and I have just finished looking through my emails and the WP comments. It’s what passes for social interaction in what I refer to as “my life”. When summarised in a single sentence it isn’t much of a life. No editor has been in touch overnight, no Lottery win has been communicated and I have, as yet, not interacted with another human. (Julia is still in that Sunday morning phase where she is grunting from inside a cocoon of duvet, in case you were wondering. Not human. Not interaction).
I have had inspiration for some haibun prose since waking this morning, and I had a very peculiar dream about something. I can remember it was peculiar, but as time passes, I can’t remember anything other than that. Dreams are like that.
On the subject of teachers, however, I seem to have a set of superpowers I did not know existed. I can remember nearly every teacher who ever taught me, and I can remember something good about nearly every one of them. I won’t bore you with a list, but I was amazed how, once I started, I couldn’t stop remembering them. It would be better if I could remember everything they taught me, but that, unfortunately, is beyond me.
I’d have liked to have been a teacher, but it was not to be. My mother wanted to be a teacher too, but it didn’t happen. Same with my paternal grandmother. It’s a small enough ambition but my grandmother was told she had to work on the farm, my mother was told she had to get a job to help support the family. I was merely told by the careers teacher that people always said teaching when they couldn’t think of anything else and I should find something else.
When spoke to Julia about this she said she’d been told to consider a career as a waitress or hairdresser, because she would no doubt get married and stop work to raise a family. Fifteen years later she completed a part-time post-grad diploma whilst number one son, at the age of two weeks, slept on the seat next to her in the lecture hall.
We used to have a saying when I was in sales – “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.”
You could say the same about life – “Nothing happens until somebody teaches something.”
And with that, I will leave you. It’s 8.46 and I am hungry.
Ha! I just remembered the name of a history teacher that had been eluding me.