I blow dry my hair every morning – the reflection of a sixty seven year old woman stares at me from her vantage in the mirror. The woman in the mirror wears no expression – hair drying is monotonous. But beyond the blank face a million thoughts are swirling – memories are being remembered, plans are being made and adventures taken. Time is travelled forward and backwards.
I was on one of these time-traveling adventures the other morning when I found myself in a classroom located half a century ago.
The room was warm, sunlight filtered through dirty windows making the dust moats hanging in the air sparkle. Teenagers were competing for seats. Chairs scraped the floor, heavy books thumped as they landed on desks, individual voices combined to make a racket and the second bell rang. I recognized the room, I was sitting mid-memory in grade twelve English.
I’ve rarely thought about grade twelve since fictitiously graduating high school fifty years ago. I’ve had no desire revisit those awkward years, my heart thumps at the suggestion, but something in this particular memory was asking me to stay for a moment, to look around, to feel.
The classroom smelled of janitor’s sawdust, the floors creaked. The windows had been painted shut for years and the air inside was stale. Our teacher sat behind his desk at the front of the room and feigned patience as the class settled.
The teacher was an old man by teenager’s standards, in truth he was probably years younger than the woman reflected in my bathroom mirror. He wore the same old blazer day after day, dandruff and chalk dust muted the faded plaid. He wafted the aroma of mildew and hair that was a few days past clean. He kept his right hand tucked up the sleeve of his blazer until it came time to write on the blackboard. The appendage was malformed and looked more like a claw than a hand – he was more comfortable with it than those of us pretending not to stare.
This teacher was the subject of ridicule in the whispers humming at the back of the class – teenagers can be mean. The nonchalance of his lessons suggested he knew his subject matter better than he taught it. He would briefly expound on a topic or two, write an assignment on the board and return to his seat behind his desk. The classroom would grow quiet, snickers hushed. Soon the old man would begin to doze, his head resting on the stump of his hand. He’d shake sleep away a time or two before succumbing to its lure, eventually his head would nod.
The exodus would begin with the kid located closest to the door – usually a boy, usually the class clown. Ever so gently the door was inched open, ever so quietly kids would sneak out until half the class had disappeared. At this point someone would invariably drop a book just to watch the old man startle.
I was never brave or cool enough to follow the parade – I was the quiet kid at the front of the class who watched. I felt bad for the old man, my heart ached with the embarrassment I would have suffered were I in his shoes. If he noticed the empty desks he never said, the game was probably old hat.
Why this memory? Was I remembering the kid I used to be or the old man with the gimpy hand? It’s hard to tell from this vantage. I’d had a clear view of a past long gone for a moment.
My high school was demolished years ago – old wood burned, windows broken – ashes and dust. The old man lives only in memory, the lessons he taught gone the way of the school – punctuation and grammar, ashes and dust.
An old memory wrapped in the blanket of time stirred for a moment. In a flash it painted a picture so vivid I caught a glimpse the teenager I used to be reflected in the face of the old woman in the mirror. I recognized her just that fast and then she was gone – leaving the old woman to finish drying her hair and me to ponder.