Asymmetry

I recently got in touch with an old teacher, the one mentioned in the post Life Drawing. Having written the post, I realised I simply wanted to say "thanks" for that 40-year-old act of kindness. I knew he would not remember me, as our "contact hours" had been very few and a long time ago, but the debts we owe to our mentors and teachers so often go unacknowledged that it seemed worth the effort. I was pleased to discover he is well, and still actively producing artwork in the form of ceramics.  Pleased, and relieved.

Relieved, because the regrettable fact is that few of us think to round off such debts until it is too late.  People remain stalled, in our minds, at the age we last knew them, "forever young" in a state of suspended animation.  But let's say that you, like me, are now approaching 60. At the age of ten -- 50 years ago -- you had a wonderful teacher, whose creative attention transformed your life. She was then, say, about 30 years old. You remember her vividly, just as she was, young and enthusiastic, full of life, totally focussed on you and your fumbling efforts. But, do the arithmetic:  incontrovertably, she is now around 80 years old.  Eighty!

Miss Hendey, doing her thing in 1964

Now, old age is a lottery, and has no respect for lives lived usefully in the service of others. Ill-health and dementia are the spectres awaiting us on those final haunted corridors of life's journey (evolution clearly has no use for us once we're past the age of reproduction) and to intrude on an elderly and quite possibly infirm person because of some foolish personal redemptive mission should give anyone pause for thought.

Assuming, of course, that person is still with us.  I recall the shock and surprise of discovering that "my" significant teachers were all already dead. Shock and surprise and, I admit, a certain release.  All debts cancelled.

That clean sweep will also have saved me from the humiliation of not being remembered. Teachers must dread that encounter:  "Remember me, miss?"  "Ah, nope, sorry..."  There is a huge asymmetry in the relationship between students and teachers. The expression in loco parentis is used to describe the legal position of teachers, but it can be an emotional truth, too; at least, as experienced by the individual student.  By the individual teacher, not so much.  Who did you say you were, again, dear?

Some kids loathe school, can't wait to leave, and do their best to disrupt things while they're there.  Many more loathed at least some of their teachers.  But that hatred of individual teachers can be deep and true and, in a perverse way, character-forming.  Others, of course, enjoy school, and find they receive from these substitute parents a degree of nurturing, attention and ambition that home life may not provide.  Either way, schooling is an intense experience, and many people find themselves recalling certain key teachers and conducting an internal dialogue with them --- perhaps angry and recriminatory, perhaps not -- for decades afterwards.

But, inevitably, those teachers will have forgotten all about you.  Teachers are not parents, after all, and in the course of a career will have taught hundreds, possibly thousands, of students.  You might flatter yourself that a select few would stick in the memory, but the chances are that you will not be among them, and it is more likely those little bastards who tried to make her working life a misery who populate her fading recollections of 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Unless, of course, that was you. But, never mind, it's probably rather late to be saying "sorry", now, too.

Mr. Picasso: No, don't tell me, the face is familiar...
Ex-pupil:  We used to call you Nosey!  Remember
how we'd all duck, whenever you turned round
from the blackboard?   I HATED you!