The future's not ours, to see.......

When I was 6, I entered Miss Taylor's Class.

I was quiet, and undefined. I was shy, and quite a nervous child.

Miss Taylor was my heroine.

We made Dougal's from Fairy Liquid bottles, with a Fruit Jelly for a Nose. She told me not to eat it, but I ate it anyways.

In the December of Primary 2, I sat my Primary Ballet Exam, and that was my show and tell.

In the February we sat a test. Glancing round the room as I completed my paper, I panicked when I realised that my paper wasn't the same as everyone elses. I was terrified. I couldn't ask her, because then she would know I was looking at other people's papers. I couldn't not do anything, because it was a hard test, and I had a harder test compared to the others.

I handed my paper in and the look on my face must have spoke volumes. "Your paper was different because I wanted to see if you could do it". The relief - I almost passed out. I was especially pleased when I heard her say to the "brainbox" in the class the same thing. I never had myself down as "clever".

In April, probably around this time, she took us on a trip, to coincide with a Project we were working on. We visited Hobsland Farm, and examined the cows, and the milking barn, and the lorries which came to take the milk away. I loved that trip, and I loved Miss Taylor. I talked about Hobsland farm for years later (This is Hobsland farm by the way).

Fast Forward 27 years, and I was leaving the School Fete with my husband and my Children when I spotted a familiar figure walking out of the school. I pulled the car over beside her and wound the window down.

"Excuse me", says I, "where you Miss Taylor?".

She looked at my with what I can only describe as a very perturbed look.

"Yes", I was, once, long ago".

"I was in your Class in Primary Two. You inspired me to become a teacher, I wanted to be exactly like you".

She leaned over and peered in the car, pointed in and said "And are these your children", (one of whom was the same age as I had been);

"Yes", I told her proudly.

"Oh God", she said, and wandered off.

And I was left shattered. I wanted her to remember me, I wanted her to say, "I knew you would grow up to be a teacher". I wanted her to say "do you remember that trip to Hobsland Farm".

I am cursed with a memory that remembers faces no matter how quickly they pass through my life. Each child I spoke to while working in schools I remember. Admittedly, I remember the bad ones more readily than the good ones.

What I always have to remember what were amazing memories to me, were merely days in the lifes of strangers.