As Orwell wrote–“Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed.”
Today was a great reminder of that quote. We had a teacher a North High, whose name escapes me now because this teacher no longer exists. I walked by this teacher’s room today, or what I remembered was the teacher’s room, and the students were being taught by someone I did not know. No one has informed me of the previous teacher’s whereabouts; no one has informed me of who this new person is. We do have administrators who are capable of emailing, and our English department (who this un-person could have been a part of up until recently) just met as a whole group yesterday, but nothing was said or written. We all have classes so we move along.
Later on in the day I had that nagging itch of memory, so I asked some colleagues, “Did you guys get any news about a teacher leaving our school? Wasn’t there that teacher who used to teach over there (I pointed)? Did anybody announce it? Was it in an email, or something?
I soon realized that I had asked a lot of questions in a quick span, as my colleagues were sporting some confused looks. “Remember?” I asked another question. “This teacher taught that class that someone else taught long ago. Many kids signed up for it and the class was around for at least 20 years. Remember? Wasn’t there that class that was on the books for about 20 years and then ceased to exist last year? And now the teacher that taught that class does not exist?”
Their mouths started to form sentences, but no words came out, as if those, too, ceased to exist. You would think that a teacher who had been at a school for a long time (or was it a long time?) would surely get some shout-out somewhere.
Instead, someone else is now in that teacher’s classroom. Perhaps next week there will be yet another new person in there. Perhaps all this will come back to my memory soon, or I will cross paths with this former teacher again.
Perhaps we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.