In the years before I retired I had thought little about what I would do with all the free time that I suddenly would have. On the day that Caroline rang me at work and asked how I felt about living in the Cayman Islands, I thought that retirement was still at least two years away. Five months later my life had taken an enormous change and I was a man of leisure living on a tropical island.
After about a year of living an idyllic, lazy life of complete self-indulgence, Caroline began nagging me (no, I’ll be nice – urging me) to help in any way I could at our local Infant/Primary School on a voluntary basis. I was a retired, qualified, experienced teacher who had been cleared in the UK in a number of checks designed to keep perverts and dodgy characters out of schools and away from children. (That’s important. Remember it!) She thought that I had a lot to offer and a school could benefit from my experience. Early in September 2009 I arrived, a little apprehensive, for my first day.
At 8:35 I was taken into the assembly hall where 320 smiling children chanted. “Good morning Mr Terry,” in the way children do there and everywhere.
The first week was interesting. I had never been in a school with children younger than eleven before and I had a number of new and mostly enjoyable experiences. They ranged from the look of disbelief on the face of a very perceptive 8-year-old girl who said, “You can’t be. You look too young,” when I answered her question about how old I am, to the look of haughty disdain I was given by a 10-year-old girl when I asked her if she knew what ‘similar’ meant. The lowest point came on Thursday when I felt pressure on my arm and looked down to see a 4-year-old boy wiping his very runny nose on my sleeve.
I went home on at the end of the week feeling I had done a good job and had possibly “made a difference.”
Something happened on the Saturday morning that spoilt everything. All she had to say was, “short, fat, white, old and ugly” and they would have got me. There are only 55,000 of us on island. Take away women and children, black men, slim men, average and tall men, good-looking men and any man under 55 and who are you left with? My neighbour, Bernard and me. Unfortunately, he was in the UK at the time and as he’s got a really bad stammer, he wouldn’t have deflected interest away from me for very long anyway.
That Saturday morning, I was on my own in the supermarket. Caroline was too busy to come. She was playing Bejewelled Blitz on Facebook. I was slowly pushing a trolley around when a very pretty little girl aged about eight, stepped in front of me, gave me a huge, genuine, beaming smile and said,
“Hello Mr Terry.”
I did not recognise her but I realised that she was a pupil to who had seen me at school.
“Hello,” I said.
She carried on smiling at me but said nothing. She was obviously expecting me to say something, so I said, “It’s hot today isn’t it?”
She mumbled something like, “Yes, it is.” The smile was slipping from her face and looking a little disappointed, she said, ”Bye” and wandered off.
I felt pretty bad and told myself that I should have made more of an effort to talk to her. All was not lost, however, because a few minutes later I saw her on tiptoes bending over the frozen food compartment studying a packet of broccoli. I went over to her.
“What’s your name?” I asked breezily, with the friendliest smile I could muster.
She stood up straight and said, “Keela.”
“Hello Keela.” I said. “Do you live near here?”
She flung the broccoli back into the freezer and ran off down the aisle. I was not surprised because I realised immediately why - it was a different girl!
I was terrified. What should I do? Should I find the manager and tell him I’d made a little mistake or stand there and wait for the sirens to start and the doors to self- lock?
I did neither but finished the shopping and went home. I was greeted by a very happy Caroline who told me she had some great news. “Good,” I thought. “I need some.”
She had set a personal best score of 317,300.
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