Subversion in the School

I went to a very Christian girls school. It was a boarding school, although I didn't board. One of the most important things in a school like this was keeping us girls safe and away from boys. It was for parents to decide which boys were suitable, not the school. The school also had to think about men, a school full of sequestered teenage girls is many a mans fantasy and some of those girls were very hormonal and men might not have safe from them....

Not surprisingly, there were not too many male members of staff. Those that there were tended to be very respectable married men. Except one. Well i am sure he would have been married if it had been legal back then.... He had a long term partner and the school turned a very Christian blind eye. After all, us girls were definitely safe with him.

I have a handful of vague memories. I so wish my memory was better.... He leant me a book once and I remember when I gave it back to him he asked me what I thought. I have a vague memory of being non-committal in that annoying teenage way. I don't think he ever leant me a book again but it didn't matter.

The thing is, teenagers often are too embarassed of emotion, of adults to be entirely honest with their thoughts and feelings. Sometimes they don't work them out until later and then the moment is gone.

The author of that book is still one of my favourite, a couple of decades later... And I wish I could tell him. But he and his partner bought a bar somewhere exotic......

Thing is though, he saw something in me to lend me that book. Sheri S. Tepper is an author whose books are often feminist and political in nature. She uses fantasy to really dig at humanity and see what lies underneath. When you worked in such a school, to lend such a book to a pupil.... Me, not a different one. He saw a seed in me and I would like to think it grew. I have no idea what he would make of my pagan faith.

So many teachers had an impact on me, often in tiny ways. Some affected me without me ever being able to recall why and what. But sometimes the tiniest things have the biggest echoes down through time - like a book - that authors thoughts have surely helped shape my own.