Schoolmaster

After a week in the tempest, it was nice to have a few quiet hours. Sunday morning began with the regular occurrence of our dog's lack of understanding about weekends. Though she will generally be the last to stir on any given weekday, she insisted on being let out first at six in the morning by me, and then an hour later by my wife. As a result of this early rising in spite of the fact that we had no place we had to be, we climbed back into bed and began watching "Goodbye Mr. Chips." Our son joined us about halfway through, and with the dog snoring at the bottom of the bed, we watched until the end.
It reminded me of the laser disc of "To Sir, With Love" my friend gave me some years back. And the saccharine redundancy of "Mr. Holland's Opus." And the bare-bones prose of Frank McCourt's "Teacher Man." I thought about those last words of Mr. Chips: "I thought I heard you saying it was a pity... pity I never had any children. But you're wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them... and all boys."
We have one son, and yet I feel that I have had hundreds of children. I feel that most strongly when one of the older brothers or sisters comes back from middle school or high school to pick up one of their siblings at the end of the day. It's always interesting to compare and contrast the attitudes and behaviors of children from the same family. One who likes math, while the other stares out the window when it's time for multiplication facts. Those whose voice can be heard from across the playground, while the younger sister or brother won't say a word even when called upon.
Sunday morning was also the annual Pancake Breakfast at my son's elementary school. Even though it's been two years since we were part of the action behind the scenes, we still made the hike up the hill to have some morning food with the community in which we raised our son: His school. We talked to parents, teachers, students and alumni. It was a reunion, of sorts. I told the short version of the story about how I became a teacher. I said that I had grown tired of managing a book warehouse where my twenty-year-old employees would come to work after missing several days with the excuse, "I didn't call in because my phone didn't have a seven." I thought that I might have a better chance if I could catch these guys when they were ten. Not just one or two of them. Hundreds of them, in a seemingly never-ending stream.