I Was A Teacher - A Memoir (Part I)

I WAS A TEACHER- A MEMOIR

(PART I:  EARLY GOLDEN DAYS)

I was a teacher.  Rather, I was a senior high school teacher who started his teaching career at the age of 21 (at least one year earlier than my peers).  You may be thinking that I must've loved being a teacher to become one.  Ironically, I just took it as an opportunity to escape the family that I didn't want to live in. As a mischievousness of destiny, I was born into a family that I didn't belong to, and even worse, I was born into a country with a regime which I would never be able to have connection with.  And so as a logical consequence, the ultimate goal of my youthful life was to escape- escape from any type of confinement which may degrade the values of a true human-being.  But first of all , prior to my lifetime escaping, I was a teacher and I am going to tell you about that.
   

EARLY GOLDEN DAYS

Most of us may live a very long life but sometimes after the long journey through this life, there is just a short moment like a minute, an hour, a day or so which would stay on our mind for us to recall, to go back, to realize that we did live instead of a mere existence. The first forty nine days of my teaching career is the case. 

The First Day

We were sent to Omon district of Hau Giang town - a town in the far South of Vietnam - in a group of about twenty training teachers of a variety of academic subjects for forty- nine -day professional practice. We lived in the same house, a two-story building of local authority, got along pretty much well and really had a wonderful time together. Having dinner at a side-walk kiosk on the first day, we, for the first time, realized that it would no longer be appropriate since from that moment we had become teachers, which required a whole new system of behaviors and attitudes. Sitting on the balcony of our residence in a late afternoon with the sight of large Omon River in the front, I started to read "The Gadfly"- the novel that came along with my legendary teaching days, identifying myself with a naive- pure- innocent- gorgeous- spiritually fragile Arthur Burton in it.  I even stopped by the local church attending praying ceremony just to feel more like him.  Both of us started the first page of our life with the same new feeling: warm, enthusiastic and vulnerable.

"Falling in Love"

I don't remember exactly how and when we - my little angels and I- started to "fall in love" with each other but in somehow, it did happen. We taught and studied together in class-room as a teacher-in-charge and students. We did the manual tasks required by school together like co-workers. We went out on picnics on weekends together like traveling buddies. We went out for coffee at night together like close pals. We shouted and laughed together in the school musical festival like all other crazy youngsters around us. On top of that, there is one special thing that astonishes me upon looking back:  the respect we reserved for each other despite the facts that we were just a few year-old apart, as close as never closer and just together for a total of forty nine destined days.  

Farewell Day

Everything would finally come to an end without a single exception. Then came the day I had to say goodbye to my forty seven little angels. Despite that it was prescheduled, it still hit my heart hard and caused severe pain.  It was just like you fell far down all of a sudden from the very high top of happiness mountain- falling and keeping falling down in the ultimately hopeless efforts of lingering one more moment on the newly lost desirable heaven.  There were much tears on the farewell day.  There were a lot of crying. It was raining a little bit outside when the van moved away from its station but in my heart it seemed like it was raining cats and dogs like never before. Something precious had just gone and may never come back since some things are destined to happen just once in a human-being lifetime.

I realized painfully something like that had just been broken, fallen apart in my life and would never be able to be intact again.  It was the unconditional love. It was the innocence.  As unconditional and innocent as them giving me $400 (a big sum of money at the time) in the most respectful and lovely way when finding out I was in a tight budget.  As unconditional and innocent as me giving them back $600 later in the most possibly discreet way knowing that it would never be accepted.  Since it was discreet, it was an eternal question whether it came to its destination or was fallen into some other unknown hands. But did it matter?  Actually, it didn't at all because I didn't believe that they would be happy finding out that it was given back to them, because only at the moment they gave it to me was when they were happy.  That type of innocence  would I never find back in my life later on.      

(to be continued)

08/27/2010

Jeffrey Thai