When I conceived the hippie letter writing idea, I felt compelled to include some trinket of my appreciation with the letter. I couldn’t think of a better trinket for an English teacher than rewriting a research paper he had assigned. But this wasn’t just any old research paper.
The “We-Search” Paper
At my high school, a requirement for every 10th grade student was to write an I-search paper. My teacher thought an excellent precursor to that would be to form groups and write a “we-search” together, on a topic of the teacher’s choosing. So in his typical grandiose fashion, our teacher brought us through the attic of the building and into the clocktower, because what better way could he assign ‘time’ as the “we-search” topic.
I struggled with this assignment, and I’m sure I let the group down. But times have changed, and I found some new inspiration for this assignment. I present to you my updated paper on ‘Time”.
Time: A Trinket of My Appreciation
I had a teacher in high school who once told me a story about a previous student of his. As the story went, it was the day of the final. The students filed into the gymnasium, located their class, and took their places in one of the many folding-desk chairs perfectly lined up to fill the gym. As the students were instructed to start their exams, this particular boy opened his pale-blue composition book, quickly jotted down a few words, gathered his belongings and exam, handed it to the teacher, and walked out. Done in less than two minutes. The teacher opened the composition book and read, “I do not feel like taking the exam today.” Impressed with the honesty and clarity of the statement, the student earned the highest grade.
This story was shared with me 29 years ago when I was just fifteen. I lacked the self-confidence then to run with it the way I wanted to; however, now I’m an adult with plenty of life experience behind me, including some recent health issues that have caused me to give up my career. Since that happened, I’ve been struggling to find a direction in life. Until, that is, a few months ago. And all that leads me to this:
Mr. Henry,
29 years ago, as part of a group of 10th graders from your class, I contributed to our ‘we-search’ paper about time. Unfortunately, I know I only failed the group by being the weakest one. I was not ready to understand the assignment fully, so therefore I do not feel like writing a paper today. As I will explain to you in the following, updated we-search about time, I only needed a “few more days” to complete the assignment.
Sincerely,
Jill
Time, as defined by Merriam-Webster.com, is a “nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future.” My mathematical mind translates that definition into a very linear timeline, with events placed in order as they happen, and where they will remain in that order throughout my existence. However, recent situations in my life have brought back memories–memories that feel like they just happened yesterday–of events that occurred over 25 years ago. And my mathematical mind has been blown. What if our timelines aren’t linear after all?
I was a self-proclaimed math nerd in high school. Math was fun. Math was my strength. But surprisingly, none of these memories are related to math at all. They all come from one eccentric, engaging, and enigmatic English teacher I had in 10th grade: Mr. Henry. I wish I could say that that was the year I learned to love English and the nuances of the written language, but in reality, another ten years would pass before that even began to happen; however, Mr. Henry and his class had such an impact on me that for the next two years of high school, I sought him out for advice and guidance and the pure enjoyment of having a conversation with him.
Almost three decades later and it seems Mr. Henry has infiltrated my life again. In the past few weeks, life decisions and actions–too many to count–can all be traced back to Mr. Henry and these precious memories. Some are related to specific assignments or finals, such as the Ezra Pound poem “In a Station of the Metro” or describing a New Yorker cover as if I was an alien discovering this planet. Others are conversations we had outside the classroom, just between us, ranging from help on assignments to life observations.
Yet all of them have in common how vivid they are: Mr. Henry’s smile that always indicated there was more meaning behind his words, his uncanny ability to convey those meanings with his actions and facial expressions more than he ever could have with words, and his bushy eyebrows that wonderfully captured his eyes–eyes that glimmered because of the brilliance this man had inside him. I always left a conversation feeling like he had just given me a small piece to a puzzle, and if I came back for more he’d bestow another puzzle piece upon me until he had given me nearly all the pieces, leaving it up to me to find the remainder.
And this brings us back to the definition of time. Well, almost. It started a few weeks ago with a Bob Dylan song that Mr. Henry assigned to us as our spring-term final and was followed by a remembered conversation, another assignment, more memories I hadn’t thought about in years but suddenly felt like they had just happened. And it ended a few days ago when I had the most clarity on where I wanted my life to go next all because of these signs aligning from such clear memories of Mr. Henry. Or so I thought.
Time, the subject of our 10th-grade we-search (a group research project that Mr. Henry used as a precursor to our individual I-search paper ). I had no idea where to begin a paper about time. But that was then, and this is now. Or is it? To me, I feel no expansive time lapse between ‘the then’ and ‘the now.’ These memories, down to the minute details, are clearer to me than what I had for lunch yesterday. Ok, maybe you’re thinking, “well, really, lunch? Whose lunch is that memorable that they’ll remember it the next day?” This is a better comparison: three days ago I dropped my two youngest off at their first-ever two-week overnight camp, and my memories of Mr. Henry are as clear as camp drop-off day. So back to my original question, what if our timelines aren’t linear at all?
What if events and memories are chronologically stamped on our timelines, but they don’t necessarily travel forward with us at the same rate of time? What if the universe or some greater being–or some Willy-Wonka-esque English teacher–has the ability to change the speed at which a memory travels? Changing the speeds so that each memory rejoins the present-day arc at the precise moment that lesson is ready to be learned. Given the last few months, I certainly believe now that that is what happened. Somehow, in some beautiful and mysterious way, these memories traveled forward slow enough to reach me at this moment in time, but in actuality, only a few days have really passed.
Looking at the passage of time this way, and learning it from lessons taught 29 years–or maybe a few days–ago from Mr. Henry, can lead me to only one conclusion: he has known about this all along. The clear recollection of his face is all the proof I need: the smile and glimmering eyes have the look of a mischievous child with a secret he can’t tell. So instead of sharing his secret, Mr. Henry masterfully laid the groundwork for the most intricate puzzle to solve. After nearly three decades, I’ve finally completed the puzzle. I just needed that missing final piece, and it was about time.