graf #2

Mr. V wasn’t the worst teacher when I had him for Latin; in fact I rather liked him.  It wasn’t until years later when I found out how bad he really was.  He made sure everyone who tried would at least pass the course, staying late to help if the student needed it, even meeting some in the public library on Saturdays (only in the winter when he wasn’t working his second job).  I liked Latin because there is almost an orchestrated chaos in the sentence construction and there was nobody to scold you for mispronunciation so there was an element of creativity involved.  Mr. V. put up with my eccentricities in class and even fostered a sort of exploratory nature on my part, urging me down the road at my own pace, even if it outstripped the class.  No, years later there were six of us fishing on the Miramachi one spring evening, and talk turned to “the good old days” because we were all school mates and disciples of Mr. V.  That is when four of us found out what the other two had suffered.  If he was alive today I’d kill him with toenail clippers.  You know what it was that happened, we hear it all the time now.  We fingerprint, do background checks, monitor and cross-check.  We didn’t then because fear was stronger than knowledge.  Mr. V.: I hope you’re suffering, you bastard.