A lesson to learn

He stood in front of the classroom. All the children were all looking at him waiting. Silence. He looked round the room but couldn’t say anything. It was the end of his first month of teaching.

14 years earlier...

He had never met a talking rabbit before. It had yellow and green stripes. It had an American accent. The rabbit gave him a present. It was a big chocolate cake. He woke up. He knew it was an important day but he couldn't remember why.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Don’t know.”

"Do you want to be a footballer?"

"Don't like football. The other boys say I'm rubbish."

"Well, not many boys or girls can make a living from playing football. Do you want to be a train driver?"

"I don't think I would be very good at driving trains. The train would probably crash."

“I don't think it would. I'm sure you would be very good at driving trains. Mummy and daddy said you like doing maths at school. Perhaps you would like to be an accountant.”

“I like counting....I like doing sums. I think maybe perhaps I would like to be a maths teacher, like daddy.”

“A maths teacher? That would be fun, wouldn’t it? Doing lots of sums and helping people to do their sums.”

“Yes I like doing sums. And I’m good at it.”

“Why do you like doing sums?”

“I just do. I've always enjoyed doing sums.”

“Mummy and daddy say you find it difficult to make friends.”

14 years later…

“You are charged with 4 serious contraventions of the Inter-Galactic Ultra-code. If found guilty, you will be imprisoned in the eternal labyrinth. How do you plead? Guilty? Or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

“The jury have reached a verdict. The verdict is guilty.”

“But I don’t understand. I'm not guilty of the crimes. I didn't kill my pet rabbit. How can you…” Suddenly he found himself in the eternal labyrinth. He couldn’t find a way out. He feared that he would be trapped there for eternity. His clothes were slipping away and he realised that he was completely naked.

He woke up. He realised that he had only been asleep for a few minutes. It was 3.15 in the morning. Another night with hardly any sleep. A few hours later…

He was standing at the front of the classroom. The children were still looking at him. Silence. More silence. He looked round the room but couldn’t think of anything to say.

1,2,3…counting usually helped to control his temper. It was a technique that his therapist had suggested. When you feel as if you are about to explode then try to control it by slowly counting from 1 to 10, the therapist had said. Everyone knew he liked numbers. Numbers made him happy. In the classroom he was now so completely wound up and so totally frustrated. The problem was that he loved maths and had always wanted to be a maths teacher but the reality of actually teaching maths in a real classroom to a class full of real children was harder than he had ever imagined and it was difficult to balance the equation…

1,2,3,4…now he was trying to keep calm but the children were all staring at him waiting for him to say something. He was calculating what to say next. He was working out the permutations in his head and weighing up the odds. He had always wanted to be somebody that the children could count on. He had the authority but they had the numerical advantage…

1,2,3,4,5…in the world of maths he knew that 2 plus 2 equals 4. But in the real world 2 plus 2 never equals 4. 2 plus 2 seems to equal 5 or sometimes 2 plus 2 equals 6. Trying to work out what 2 plus 3 equals in the real world was beyond him. He could never figure people out. He felt that people couldn’t figure him out either. He liked maths because there were rules and the numbers obeyed the rules but in the real world….

1,2,3,4, 5,6…he wanted to multiply their talents but all he was bringing to them was division. What could he add if he felt he was just taking away? How could he find the answer to the question? How could he find the positives if all he could see were the negatives?

1,2,3,4,5,6,7…the sum of the parts was supposed to be greater than the whole, wasn’t it? Or was it that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts? Or perhaps the sum of the whole was bigger than the parts? Now he realised it was a zero sum game.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8...he was supposed to be working 9 to 5 but it felt like it was 24/7 or even 25/7. He couldn’t sleep. He tried counting sheep to get to sleep but he couldn’t count them. They were uncountable. And uncounted. He would have liked to grab 40 winks but he couldn’t even manage one wink. Or even half a wink. He was at sixes and sevens. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other, whatever that meant. He thought he was one of a kind. He felt he was trying to solve an impossible soduku where the numbers didn’t add up properly whatever combination he tried. He was going off at a tangent.

1,2,3,4…5…6…5…6…the pause had seemed like eternity. But then the explosion. And suddenly the torrent of tears. They took him to the headteacher’s office. From there to the hospital. In the old days they would have called it a nervous breakdown. After he had started to recover bit by bit he went home to live with his parents in his old room in his old bed with the old Star Trek posters on the wall. Although he still loved his subject more than anything, nothing ever seemed to add up and so he never went back to teaching. His number was up.