Time

And Mr. Marland

If I were to put Time into a form, a thing I could actually see, I would like it to look similar to my high school creative writing teacher, Mr. Marland. Implacable, consistent, peering at me over the rim of his eye glasses, a furrow deepening on his forehead as I spin yet another excuse for tardiness. Something about the dog eating my homework. Time’s fingers tapping on the desk top and muttering about deadlines, responsibilities, procrastination practices and all sorts. But still, with a glimmer of hope that this student of his would actually get it together at some point and develop a more reasonable relationship with the constraints of living within the accepted system of a structured twenty-four hours to every day.

The image that actually fills up my head is Time standing tall, rigid, immovable, tightly laced up, no crinkly laugh lines.

My relationship with Time could be termed as volatile. Mondays we are skipping through the day arm in arm like best friends, plans being made, things getting done, the long lists optimistically possible. By Wednesday there is some tension between us, Friday sees us needing an intervention, and the weekend is a full blown fist flying dust up as I try to pummel Time into giving me MORE. I never come out of those scraps looking too great. Time always marches on, completely unscathed by my outraged attacks.

I can picture Mr. Marland’s eyebrow soaring up into his hairline as I make this confession. “Forty-five years,” I hear him suggesting, “seems a reasonable amount of time to get this sorted”.

Mr. Marland had some expectations of his students to be conscious of time constraints. Essays and assignments were required to be on his desk when due, dilly dallying was not encouraged and he never quite believed the bit about the dog eating the final copy. I spent more than one lunch hour hastily flinging words down on paper as deadlines for turning in our work loomed.

I first became aware of this teacher’s uncanny ability to know when assignments were last minute attempts at dazzling writing, or carefully constructed, well thought out pieces of prose after a parent teacher interview. At the conclusion of that interview, my Mom had a few pithy comments to make to me on this subject. All assignments that I handed in on time and without panic, were mediocre in content and imagination, legible and correctly spelled. Last minute scribbles awash in grammatical warfare and punctuation violations were invariably more interesting. Why, asked both my Mom and my teacher, could I not weave the two together. It’s a fair question, and should be noted that although my sixteen year old self thought my last minute flurries of writing brilliant, they barely made the grade. I still don’t have an answer although I do think about it … when I have time.

Blessed with a teacher with a dry sense of humour and patience of unending proportions, creative writing classes were the ones I looked forward to at school the most. They were the ‘why’ of my school experience. The excitement when a new writing exercise was presented to us, the woozies that fluttered around my stomach when our work was handed back, pages scrawled with his notes and comments, the high and the lows that each homework assignment produced, I loved it. He encouraged while making demands. He lit fires of imagination and didn’t fall for excuses of incompetence. He believed in us.

Tucked away in a brown paper envelope, I still have some of those creative writing assignments. They are embarrassingly invaluable. Mr. Marland’s comments have not lost any of their relevancy.

I rather wish I could hand these newsletters over to him before pushing ‘publish’, as for sure they would be better constructed and a lot of the extraneous would be edited out. More than that, I wish I could tell him how much he influenced my young self, and how, years later, he continues to do so.

What I would prefer for him not to know is that Time and I still haven’t really found an easy relationship. We are still muddling along together in a haphazard fashion. Time, relentless in it’s insistence that there be only twenty-four hours per day, and me constantly trying to extend every one of those hours at any cost. The ensuing results exactly the same as wriggling into those jeans that fit last year. Somethings should just not be stretched to that extent.

You may have surmised at this point, that I left this to the last minute. I stand before you meekly handing in my writing, the bit that I wrestled back from my imaginary dog.

I hear that sigh, Mr. Marland.

‘Til the next time, kristine