January 18, 2007
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I heard tell of my old High School teacher the other day. It’s a really
strange thought. He asked for me to get in touch with him and catch up,
say hi. I don’t know if I will.He was probably one of my favorite teachers and a good one too and
extremely nice… well at least to me. At least I can say that he
clearly meant well in all of is dealings and that’s the best you can
really say about anyone. I have no ill feelings toward him whatsoever.
And yet, it’s just a strange idea to go talk to him again, almost
inconceivable.Even the way he described me is kind a weird, “one of the smart ones”.
It makes me wonder… Did he have high expectations for me? Did he have
high hopes? Probably not. No doubt all teachers feel at least a tiny
little connection to their students, but chances are most don’t really
care a whole lot about what you did with your life. Sure they’d be
curious. They’d take pleasure in taking pride in your accomplishments
if you have any and they’d shrug and wish you the best if you don’t.That’s just it, I’m sure if I were living in a ditch somewhere or on
the verge of becoming President my conversation with my old teacher if
I had it would be pretty much the same. He’d ask wholly natural
questions that you’d expect a teacher to ask his former student, and I’d obfuscate my responses, he’d tell a
few stories and talk a little about himself and be entirely cordial and
polite the entire time. No chance he’d beat me over the head with a
stick or yell curses upon me or anything like that, but no doubt I’d
come away feeling entirely disheartened nonetheless.Why discomfort? Because it’s of the past? A shadow. It’s not supposed to bleed into the present.
No that’s not true. Thee are pasts that I wish would bleed more into
the present. Shadows I wish I could live with all the time. The
nostalgia I like, and to be sure I enjoyed sitting in his Math class
back in the day if it was one of the few joys I had back then.Why discomfort? I don’t know. But there have been other shadows of the
past that have come up of late that have had a similar impact on my
perspective.The other day I was at a store and shopping for something and someone
recognizes me and asks me if I am who myself. I answered cautiously
yes, and he said something along the lines of “I’ll never forget, black
Valedictorian”. I felt no ill will toward the person who said those
words but for some reason they made me shudder. I just wanted to get
away from there as soon as possible and I did.Why did it bother me so? I just don’t understand.
The other day I was browsing the web and I unearthed web pages about a
couple of my former high school classmates. We were.. well not close…
but I guess we occasionally acknowledged one another as high achievers.
One of them I was closer to when I was much younger but by High School
well it was as I said we acknowledged one another.. a little. I think I
was more of a subject of study for them than anything else. To be fair
they were little more to me than an object of my curiosity in my
arrogant youth.It felt wrong reading even this most miniscule amount of information
that they had written, like I was stepping into a world that I had
forsaken. But no I’ve got no real problem with reading public
information even if the person I am reading it about doesn’t realize I
am doing it. Some people see a privacy problem there, but I think
that’s just absurdity. Anyway, was it that they seemed so damned happy
that bothered me? Sure you can’t really tell anything about someone
from such a trivial amount of data so surely my reason tells me that
they are likely to be living normal lives too having trials and
tribulations and moments of happiness like everybody else.So why discomfort? What is it with me and my inability to face the past without feeling strange about it?
This is something that really bothers me and something I think that
needs to change. I hate the thought of all my yesterdays falling into
the land of foolish discomfort as time passes and finding myself
increasingly incapable of facing them. There are too many memories that
I cherish too much to let that happen. I shall have to find the mental
barrier within me that prevents me from finding joy in the
reincarnation of the past and demolish it. I want not a mote of dust of
it to remain.
