PHENOMENON

I was looking down at the papers on my table when someone walked past, showering me with goose bumps. I did not look up, for I felt what I would see would be hard to take. Through my eyelids, it seemed, I saw only his feet in white shoes and his legs in light blue pants. The walk, the legs, and the presence were just like Phil’s. But our son Philip died in January two years before at age nineteen, after a two-and-a-half-year struggle with acute leukemia.

Our table arrangement formed a U, where a dozen English teachers signed up students, not for our own classes, but for other teachers’ classes. Those who signed up with me did not know they would not be in my class.

It was a relief this young man did not stop at my table, because I might have made a fool of myself, and possibly of him. I felt Phil was in the room, yet not in a form to connect with me. Of course, I knew the boy couldn’t be Phil, but just someone who walked like him, yet his presence both chilled me out and surrounded me with warmth. I dreaded to look up, wherever he was, like dreading to finish reading a good book, but finally I did look up and found him across the room.

His hair was red!

From across the large room, the boy looked just like Phil from the back. Only in height did they differ. When he turned around and left the room, I saw his face. Still exactly like Phil. For the remainder of that day I could not get this boy out of my mind.

Over the years most of my students were advanced seniors, enrolled in subjects such as college-level Shakespeare, the humanities, World Lit, and advanced composition. Sophomores were, of course, in my German classes. But this fall semester it was my turn to teach one class of sophomore English composition. I looked forward to stressing the areas in which I always found a lack at the senior level, such as the conjugations of the verbs lie/lay, sit/set, and rise/raise.

The good discipline in my classes over the years was partly due to seating charts. They also enabled me to learn their names quickly. Therefore, on my sophomores’ first day with me they met a non-alphabetical seating chart on the chalkboard which would change every few weeks. If anyone asked why, I said, “Well, everyone can’t sit on the front row at the same time.” That was usually their introduction to my brand of humor.

On this occasion I had thirty-five desks to fill and had thirty-five names. I had no idea what my new students were like, for I had not signed them up. The most striking name to my thinking was that of Noel Curtis whose gender I did not know, and I placed him or her at the front desk in the middle of five rows, ten feet from my desk in the corner. I looked forward to their arrival; after all, I had taught them in my mind all night long the night before, instead of sleeping.

When the tenth-graders arrived that first day, they were eager, friendly, cheerful, orderly—thirty-four of them. Now the tardy bell was about to ring and this front chair in the middle row was the only one still empty. In the last two seconds Noel Curtis arrived and took the only seat left without seeming to look for it. The others cheered his being on time.

I looked into his blue eyes and wanted to say, “Talk,” but I said nothing. He looked at me as if reading my mind, and said, “English is not my best subject. Speech is.” I believed it. His voice was deep and rich like Phil’s, but I could have distinguished between them. His nose was slightly fuller across its midsection than Phil’s and Phil was an inch or two taller, at six feet, two inches as a senior. At his age, Noel should still be growing. His fair complexion, typical of redheads, the blue eyes, his shrug of shoulder, turn of head, his smile—or lack of it—everything, just like Phil. His presence comforted me and I determined to bring a camera to school and get pictures of this boy. I did not share these sentiments of mine, for I was careful not to “scare him off.”

That first day proved Noel was the class leader, perhaps not realizing that himself. Better yet, the class held him in high regard. It seemed they knew him from junior high but Noel himself was not so communicative with them. That day he did not make contact with any particular one and never called anyone by name. He was not an “A” student in my class but he had warned me, and I wondered why some English teacher in the past had not taught him to love the subject.

As time rushed by, I wished for something spectacular because Noel was my student. The whole situation was such a phenomenon that I didn’t want ever to lose it.

A few days into the semester I told Noel he reminded me of my son and that I wanted to bring my camera and get a picture of him, if he had no objection. He gave no comment and showed no change in facial expression, a response that could be interpreted either way. Then I kept delaying to bring the camera, thinking I had all semester to get the job done.

One day before the first change of the seating chart, Noel was missing from class. I gave instruction for the writing assignment and began walking around the room in case anyone needed help. I was close to the door when Noel showed up with the paperwork for checking out of school. Just like that, he was out of my life, and I had not brought my camera to school. I hardly knew him when he left. The next day a new seating chart greeted the class from the chalkboard.

Something big had just happened in my life and I wondered. Our family had gone through a great sorrow, one that parents never get over. Our son Phil died after a bone-marrow transplant. The room Phil had sat in, in German class, and parked his motorcycle helmet in, and to which he came when he had just suffered relapses and needed to go right into hospital, could help, I thought, if I never saw it again. I was later grateful not to have known Noel in that room. How could I have endured that? Now I moved to a different room but Phil’s absence in my life was still almost unbearable. Then two years later I knew Noel for a few days.

I do not believe Noel was an angel on a mission, but I could argue the point. Let me suggest a few peculiarities. It was shortly after I mentioned taking a picture of Noel that he checked out. Is it possible to catch an angel on film? My guess is no. Noel’s popularity with his classmates was unusual, for he was not an athlete to be adored. Prowess at debate and public speaking does not usually garner such hero worship as just participating in athletics. But while they showed their admiration for him, he seemed to take it without the ordinary reciprocation one might expect, almost as if he was actually not paying any attention to them. I sensed a goodness in the boy, something I’ve never felt to this extent about any other of the 5,000 or so students I have taught. Many were truly fine persons, but none impressed me as being good as Noel did. When he came into my classroom that first day, I watched him. He did not look around the room for an empty place, but came toward the front of the room and straight to the seat reserved for him. But if an angel, he could have seen that empty desk through the wall before he entered the room and would have known just where to sit. To come through the wall itself would have given him away.

I really don’t want to know anything more about Noel. I want to keep this memory as it is. If an angel, he served his mission.

♥♥