A POPULAR TEACHER, MR. S.

 

A POPULAR TEACHER

During my 43-years of teaching at a boys’ high school, I worked with dozens of teachers. Each teacher had their own characteristics. Some were strict and scary; and others gentle and tender-hearted, but Mr. S, a mathematics teacher, was the gentlest and the most tender-hearted.

He was a tall slender man with glasses, and was about seven years older than I. Since our desks were often close to each other, we often talked a lot with each other during recesses and after school. Thus, I came to know many things about him.

He rarely scolded his students. Even if he scolded them severely, he was not scary because his way of speaking was slow with some countryside accent. Since his scolding sounded funny, many students mocked him behind his back.

His class was usually noisy. I suppose the noisy students were a nuisance to those who wanted to study math seriously. Once he said to me, “I don’t want the principal to loiter along the corridor, looking into classrooms. He will get a bad impression of me because my class is noisy.” One day when a science teacher was teaching, his neighboring classroom was so noisy that he went there, opened the door, and shouted, “Quiet!” but he saw Mr. S teaching.

His desk in the teachers’ room was usually surrounded by several students at lunch breaks. They visited him not to ask math questions, but just to talk with him. One day he said to me, “K is a bad boy. He pulled out my leg hair. It still hurts.” It seems that not only K but also other students regarded him not as a teacher but as their classmate.

Besides these headaches, he had another. His homeroom students did not clean the classroom after school. How many times Mr. S scolded them for not cleaning, they ran away immediately after the last class finished. Therefore, Mr. S himself had to clean the classroom. He had to move 45 desks and 45 chairs to clean the floor and return them to their original positions every day. He complained to me, “These days my legs hurt.”

On top of his complaints about his students, he had much more complaints about his wife. I still remember what he said to me one day when we were eating lunch at a restaurant.

“I am angry with my wife,” he said. “She has reckless spending habits. She buys a lot of expensive cosmetics and clothes, and unnecessary things. I always have to return them to the shop. Last week, when I returned an electric appliance (I forgot what it was) together with the coupons, the shop owner said, ‘Mister, you don’t have to return the coupons. Please keep them.’” Besides her bad habits, she was an idle wife. She did not clean their house nor cook meals. She always went out to meet with her friends. He told me that he was thinking of divorcing her. (Actually, he divorced a few years after retiring from school.)

   Thus, he seems to have had hard time at home as well as at school. Today, however, he is a happy 80-year-old man because his middle-aged ex-students, about a dozen in number, have been holding a dinner three times a year for him for the past 15 or so years. I have also been invited to the feasts in recent years. Mr. S seemed to be a poor teacher at school, but today he is not. He looks happy surrounded by his middle aged ex-students. He has been and will be loved by them for the coming years. I have attended a lot of my ex-students’ alumni reunions, but I do not know a more popular teacher than Mr. S.

COMMENTS

This was a very nice and heartwarming story. It was great to read a memoir about a teacher who found a lot of joy and happiness after his career was over. I enjoyed reading this one very much.

 I could really feel your connection to this story. Your good and strong relationship as well as your admiration for him was very apparent in this work. I think that is why it came across as so sincere.

 I really liked the style. It was very different from a traditional memoir in that the story focused on the life and career of your co-worker rather than directly on your own.
 I’m not sure you need to include the information about your co-worker’s divorce and ex-wife in this memoir. The story is mainly about his relationship with his students and I think you should focus on that instead.

THE SWEETEST SOUND

　　About 50 years ago, I was a university senior and my mother was 47 years old. One day in early December she said to me showing her arm, “I wonder why my arm is spotted with dark dots.” I looked at her arm and saw several gray stains.

A few days later, when she returned home from a public bathhouse, she said she was shy because a friend of hers said to her, “Oh, my, what is the matter with your body? It is covered with dark stains.” She looked at her body and was shocked. Her friend was telling the truth. She quickly got out of the bath and wore her clothes as soon as possible.

   A few days later, my father took her to Ogaki City Hospital. When he returned home alone from the hospital, he said, “Fumiko (my mother) has been hospitalized.” Then he went directly to the tatami bed room without speaking to me or to my sister any more, and lay there for an unusually long time in a dark corner of the room. I saw him lying like a fetus on the tatami floor. I thought he was tired after hospitalizing her.

   I did not worry about her hospitalization so much. I was more occupied by my graduation exams that were being held in a few days later. I thought she would leave the hospital in a week or two. My sister was also busy preparing for the university entrance exams.

   I commuted for an hour and a half from Ogaki to Nagoya to go to university and returned home around seven o’clock. My father and sister usually prepared meals instead of my mother. We did not speak much at the table.

   About two weeks later, I visited the hospital. I saw my mother in nemaki clothes lying on a bed. She looked normal and spoke normally. As I was cleaning the bed frames and the cupboard with a wet rag, she said:

 “I can’t die before I see my grandchildren.”

   “But I’m only 21,” I said.

   Why did she talk about the distant future? I hadn’t even graduated from university. What she said was irrelevant, I thought.

   A week later, the telephone rang. My father called me from the hospital. My sister and I rushed to the hospital only to find my mother was gasping for breath, writhing with agony, kicking her nemaki clothes, and exposing her thigh. She was groaning. She was unconscious. All I could do was just watch her. I grasped her hand. It was cold. I felt like I was watching a tragic movie. Should I call her, “Mother”?

   “She can’t be saved,” my father said abruptly.

   I couldn’t believe him. Why? She was so alive just a week before. Did death come so suddenly? Unbelievable. Why so suddenly? Why, why, why?

   In less than ten minutes after I arrived at her room, she died. So suddenly.

   Later I learned that my father had known that she would die. He said she died from leukemia.

   Did my mother know she was suffering from the fatal disease? Was that the reason she told me she couldn’t die before she saw her grandchildren? Or she just said it for fun? The former is probable.

   Now I understood why my father, after returning home from the hospital, lay on the tatami floor for an unusually long time. He must have been agonizing over her impending death. He must have wondered whether he should tell us her true condition. He should have, because my sister and I were not children, but on second thought I think he did not have enough courage to disclose such an important matter. I do not blame him. I sympathize with him. How much he wanted to tell the truth to me and my sister. He just couldn’t. He must have thought it better not to disclose the truth. He must have believed she might be saved. What would I have said to her in the hospital if I had known the truth? Wouldn’t my face have betrayed me?

   After the funeral, I heard my sister crying loudly for a long long time in her room. I just sat at my desk and said faintly, “Mother, Mother.” At that moment I realized I was eternally deprived of the opportunity to utter the sweetest sound in the world.