I wrote a blog post last week. Got it all ready to post. All it needed were some photos.
That was the day Josh, a school-mate, good friend, and later, cousin-by-marriage died. I didn’t bother posting about how waiting for my PhD results is seriously getting on my nerves. It seemed a little shallow compared with the enormity of processing a world without Josh’s big personality in it.
As it happens, Josh and I hadn’t seen each other for some time. The last time we connected, via Facebook, was when his heart first failed. Paramedic Hubby explained to me just how amazing it was that Josh survived that initial event. So I told him. And he replied. He knew he had dodged a bullet.
I didn’t think he wouldn’t get better. It simply did not occur to me. So when he didn’t get better and then when he died, it didn’t compute.
And then there is my everyday world of teaching that doesn’t stop just because someone I thought was invincible turned out not to be.
My students, not knowing about my loss, have brought me a great deal of accidental comfort. The playfulness—read ‘the cheekiness’—of my year 10s reminds me a lot of Josh, always in trouble, always playing pranks, but good-hearted and loyal.
Yesterday, things took a very ‘Josh turn’.
Before the class, I opened the windows to freshen the room. It shouldn’t be a big decision but with this class, I knew I was risking a book being flung out to the bus loop. I rolled the dice.
When I started the class, I explained that I bought them chocolate Easter Eggs to have in our last class as a treat later in the week. Then we got going with the lesson.
What happened next was something I had not anticipated.
A cheerful, likable student pulled the innards out of his pen, but not all the way. Bending the pen back, he aimed at the student across from him. Firing off his shot, he missed. And the ink tube sailed right out through the open window.
The news quickly spread around the room and suddenly it was a thing. I shut the window and turned around to see more than one student pulling pens apart. On impulse I said,
If anyone flings a pen, I will eat all of the Easter Eggs myself, film myself doing it, and make you watch me eating your eggs.
The good-natured instigator thoughtfully replied ‘I’d like to see that’. The chocolate, however, won out. No pen innards were flung and we managed to get some work done.
Later, I got to thinking about how Josh would have loved that moment. How it would have been him. And how he would have called my bluff. He was fun like that. Then it occurred to me…
…time to prank some students.
Now…shhhh…
I’m saving this prank for tomorrow afternoon and I don’t need any of you giving the game away!
This Writer's Life 