Something screeches in the distance,
a sound like nails on a blackboard I remember from school
and a board rubber as it flew in my direction, shot put
from Mr Shaw’s ire, for some imagined misdemeanour.
The careers teacher never did like me,
in my pleated mini skirt, grey-white shirt
and earnest attention. I wanted to be an air stewardess but
he put paid to that, with his six foot ruler and casual
tongue. You want to clean up vomit all day? He said. One crass,
ill-thought through comment, with no offer of an alternative,
left me flailing, drowning in the chalk dust disgorged
from the flying eraser, shifted the goalpost that had grounded me
in aspiration, nothing left to keep me rooted or give me
direction. I was lost in a pother without a compass.
My guiding star extinguished and I had nowhere left
to go. The rug under my feet got pulled, along with any esteem
contained in that singular ambition, the one thing that set
me apart from the dullards, who would end up
at the local factory. I wanted to see the world not just my own backyard
and here I was, sent to my room and as usual
I had no idea what I’d done wrong.
There was something in my face, in my manner
that others took a dislike to, churned something up
in them, that got hurled in my direction to take me
down a peg or two. Whatever it was,
I got the brunt end of it. I packed the tears
into my pencil case along with my pens
and crushed hopes. I picked up my dowdy satchel, put a steel rod
in my back, locked my face forward and as I wrung my innards out,
like an old dishcloth, so my eyes would not betray
the hurt inside and secured my mouth
in the off position, so words
would not give away my shame, I walked blind
away from the taunts that I knew would ring
around my ears, the moment the teacher turned his back.
I flunked my exams, left school without the aces I thought
I’d need for the good life that was now over and went to work for Tesco
to stack shelves and prove right all the naysayers. Humiliation
hung around me like a cloak, kept a fog over my eyes until
one day, the kernel of another idea took root. I was still blind
but blind faith is a misnomer and I had it
in spades and true to form it guided me out of the classroom
never to look back and brought me to this place that I am today.