MRS. THOMAS WAS RIGHT

 

 

In high school there was a teacher named Mrs. Thomas. My long-term memory sees her as someone who had taught long enough. She looked somewhere around sixty years of age, although you know how impressions of age are when you’re only seventeen yourself. She was probably forty-two or something. Frankly, she seemed tired of it all. For some reason I remember one thing she said. The subject of what all of us teenagers were going to do with our life was being talked of. I guess that’s typical of a senior class. Someone said that they didn’t care what they were going to be doing twenty years from now. (At this point looking back, I’m curious to know how typical that is.) She said very calmly yet somehow tragically “you better care”, and just looked at that student in a kind of sad way. Not at all threatening or preachy. Just sad. Tired. She repeated it in a low voice; “you better care”. Nothing fancy, just three short words.

 

 

I can still see her face. I don’t recall other faces, what we did in that class, or any other images. Just that one moment, a kind of still frame as if the movie strip got jammed in the projector or video machine and stopped rolling. There is her face gazing at us and repeating through the years those three words, “you better care”. As for myself, I literally didn’t know or care what I was going to do the day after I graduated high school, let alone twenty years later! Hmmm, Could she be right? Every once in a while I’ve considered the odd reality that this is the only only thing I remember about that class after all these (what is now) 29 years, although I never attached any significance to it until now. Hey, maybe I’m a late bloomer, OK? Well, high school teacher, because of what I now know, those three short words of yours really did have an effect on my life, even if it did take a while. I hope you’re listening because I’ve finally got a reply for you. Nothing fancy, just three short words. So wherever you are I just want you to know this one thing. Mrs. Thomas, YOU WERE RIGHT.

8/7/99