Stargazing
I think we all had a teacher whilst at school, who like "miss Jean Brodie" from "The prime of" inspired us. Mine was in the last year of junior school, I was aged ten. He was called Mr Kelly, thin, gray haired, old fashioned and tweed wearing with those leather patches on his sleeves and cuffs. He was a an accomplished artist and drew little pencil sketches of some of us.He'd also copy old 1920's French cartoons onto the blackboard and we'd all have to draw our version, every week.
The class was divided into two teams, Romans and Greeks, Red and green. I was a geek, er..I mean Greek! He had a silver cup on the high Victorian windowsill. We'd get points for the week and the winning side had their own colored ribbon around the cup for a week, it was awarded every Friday afternoon. Course, this dividing the class would be frowned upon these days..
One day, he asked the class "What is the white ribbon that you see across the night sky? Quick as a flash, I raised my hand and said, "The milky way Sir?" "Good lad, I suppose you would know that doing a lot of star gazing, Grand?"
Give yourself a ten points, he said, whilst handing me the chalk. I walked to the front of class. He then said, "And give yourself another ten points, Paul, for having the straightest back I've ever seen, Wonderful posture!"
Looking back on the conversation, I see his sarcastic remark was regretted and he'd just tried to temper it with a complement, it didn't matter to me. My day was complete, I was a triumph for once and Mr Kelly for me,ascended to the stars!
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