Tonight I forgot to write. Here it is a little after 11 PM. Notes again from today.

My work memories and the occasional dream almost always involve the warehouse gig, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. My brothers had worked there at some point and my mother worked in the office.

I worked in the College Department, starting part-time when I turned 16. I was bad at it. I should have been fired since I was so inept. I would have to pick orders and if they asked for 22 copies of Art History, I would give them 20. I was always called back to correct my mistakes.

I am sure I would have been fired if it wasn’t for the regard people had for my mother. Some people knew this and really hated me. I was unaccustomed to such disdain and usually laughed it off, in their face. But honestly, I did not know I should have been fired. I didn’t realize that until many years later.

I went full-time when I graduated from high school. Somehow I figured out that college would be a waste of time. I had a teacher in high school, Sister Reginald who remarked that we were in school because we had to be. When we go to college that wouldn’t be the case.

It was then a bell went off in my head. I knew that I was the type of person who didn’t do things that they didn’t want to do. And to pay money for that would be insane. Plus my parents didn’t pay for my brothers or sister’s continuing education so they weren’t going to pay for mine.

‘Why stay in college? Why go to night school? Gonna be different this time…’

Having just mentioned Sister Reginald, I remember something that happened. Sister Reginald taught Algebra. I mentioned to Bill earlier this evening that I am a strict segregationist with regard to letters and numbers, and that is what Algebra is all about.

Somehow I got through 2 years of it and I have no idea how. For my last year of Algebra, on the final there were the usual letters and numbers mixing it up and how do I make sense of it. And I had to show my work.

Somehow I steeled myself and wrote an essay on my Algebra final. I apologized for my being a poor student, but I just did not ‘get it’. Sending me to summer school would be useless and anyway, my parents would kill me. Sister Reginald found it in her heart and passed me.

Occasionally I will see something on the social medias about teachers that inspired or were heroic to people. Bill has a teacher like that, Dr. Sharon they call him. There was even a reunion that Bill attended a few months ago.

I guess if I were pressed to name a heroic or inspirational teacher I would have to say, Sister Reginald. She’s probably gone now so there will be no reunion. There will be cake.

Not many notes after all…