The Desk That Stayed The Same

Crazy boy, you still have all your hair!

I didn’t expect the headmaster to recognize me all these years later, let alone pick me out of the crowd. High school was an interesting time, and I probably created more problems for him then I solved over those years as a student.

Before the graduation I had wandered around the school expecting the years to compress, which they didn’t.

The building was physically the same, the classrooms physically the same, but everything else was different. Different desks, different doors, different stuff, even the locker room, my locker was gone.

I recognized none of it, yet this was the school.

The last classroom I stopped in was hers, and everything there was different except the teacher’s desk- her desk, which was stylistically out of place.

It was during the graduation ceremony that the room was dedicated to her, a scholarship set up after all these years to help future students. A chance for her from the beyond to do for the future for what she did for me and so many others.

I was here to witness that, and was a bit surprised that nobody else from my class showed up.

Did that really surprise me?

The reception after in the school library was lonely as I didn’t know anybody there, students, graduates, and teachers all unfamiliar. In the tradition of the school, the class picture was hung up on the wall, at the first spot when you entered the room.

Every class had its picture along the wall, stretching back to the first graduating class.

I looked for my class picture, and was shocked to see it was in the middle of the wall on the next room.

At the end of the evening the Headmaster came over and we talked for a bit.

Everything worked out for you crazy boy...

That was true, everything did kind of work out, and I’ve had quite a few adventures and successes  along the way, that was certainly true.

In no small part to this place and not what it taught me, but how it taught me, and one teacher in particular- her.

It was heartbreaking how soon she passed after finding her son like that.

Like, what? I knew her son passed away at work due to an accident.

The Headmaster corrected me, no it was not work, but rather an overdose which she walked in on and found him.

I never knew that.

For some reason it worked out for me, when many times it shouldn’t have, and somehow, I was still here. 

Next Story: Always Above Mine