FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
“August is a wicked month”– so wrote the poet TS Eliot. TS (Thomas Stearns in case it ever pops up in a quiz) was wrong. August may well be wicked but September is worse. Why? One word – school. Three words if you prefer: back to school. GP (Gerard Peter in case it ever pops up in a quiz) Moran knows what he’s talking about. I have spent all my working life, all of my life practically, from age four up until my retirement, in school.
So, when I say September is a wicked month – be assured it is. For teachers! Ah, not really and most certainly not for me for whom teaching was a vocation and I loved it. September, however, is a wicked month for those little toddlers with tears in their eyes as Mammy reluctantly lets go of their tiny hands and releases them into a strange world of uncertainty and unfamiliarity.
And September is a wicked month for those returning to another year of bullying and also for those who are starting a year of non-stop-study in order to get those precious points to get them into college or wherever.
That’s a fairly long-winded intro to what I want to write about this week – Tales Out Of School (which I may write about again over the coming weeks). And so to the inaugural Tale Out Of School: Three Men in a Bar.
I am sitting in my local, O’Riada’s Bar, one nondescript night a good few years ago. This was in Peig’s time – the golden era of O’Riada’s! As Peig places my pint in front of me I casually say: “This has to be a first for you, Peig, because for sure it’s a first for me.”
Peig beams that welcoming smile of hers and beckons me to continue. “Beside me on my right, Peig, is Ronnie (not his real name) who I taught more years ago then either of us care to remember, while here, next to me on my left is Reg (not his real name) who was in the same class as Ronnie. Surely this is a first, Peig, a former teacher sitting between two of his former pupils, enjoying a drink together.”
Peig smiles that winning smile of hers and says: “Gerry, you taught them well.”
Oh, oh. Peig could be as sharp as a razor betimes and needed to be, I guess,, to cope with some of the wits (nice wits, I hasten to add) who imbibed, and still do, in O’Riada’s. And then the bombshell as Reg, on my left, turns to me and says: “Gerry, you never taught me.”
I turned to Reg, looked him straight in the eye and said: “I’m certain sure you were in my class. Furthermore I had several conversations with your mother outside my classroom door.”
Reg was unfazed. “Gerry, you never taught me.”
I am genuinely bothered and bewildered. Which is when Ronnie, on my right, pulls out his mobile phone, taps a few digits and proceeds to show us all a photograph. It’s a photograph of Ronnie in Sixth Class, taken the Monday after Saturday’s Confirmation in Saint Mary’s Cathedral. The annual taking of this photograph, always by the late Tom Brett, was a custom initiated by the De La Salle Brothers and which I continued after they’d finished teaching in Kilkenny.
“There,” said Ronnie, pointing to the photo, “that’s me and there’s you Reg,”
And, lo and behold, there was Reg sitting as proud as punch in the first row. Bingo. “See, Reg, told you, you were in my class,” I say. “But,” says Reg cool as the proverbial cucumber, “you never taught me.”
And now Ronnie and I are looking at each other, totally and utterly confused. What the hell is going on here, we’re wondering. Who’s crazy or who’s not? And then Reg calmly tells me: “Gerry, I was in hospital most of that year with a very serious injury and only showed up for Confirmation.”
And then I remembered and remembered the chats with his mother informing me how he was getting on. Mystery solved. At last. And if there’s one thing this former teacher learned that night it was this: when it comes to certainty, there is no certainty!
