The eighth-grade assistant principal, Mr. M, retired this year. What a year to retire — everything tossed in the air and mixed up, then tossed again.
“Are you going to stay another year so you can end normally?” I joked.
“Oh, no!” he laughed — Mr. M’s famous “Oh, no!” that’s his default answer to silly questions or ridiculous situations.
“Just wanted to let you know that student X decided to get up and tell student Y how very fine he thought she was and how…”
“Oh, no!”
Mr. M, who seemed to know everyone, who seemed able to remember more names than a telephone book. “You remember So-and-so? About six years ago? Well, I saw her working at the Spinx on X Road…” There was not a student he couldn’t remember, unless the student was one who flew under the radar the entire three years. “Oh, he’s a good kid — I don’t know many of them,” he joked. But he was joking about not knowing them and the false dichotomy he had just created — he didn’t really believe in “good” kids and “bad” kids. They’re just kids. Some of them seem more determined than others to make their life’s share of bad decisions before turning sixteen, but he didn’t see them as bad. That’s key in an administrator. Or a teacher.
So what could the school do for a man who’d given decades to the school and its students, who was known and loved throughout the community, respected as a tough but fair administrator who wanted all the kids to succeed but wouldn’t suffer any foolish behavior that might jeopardize that — what does a school do when he retires in 2020, when in this last week of school it’s been two and a half months since we’ve even worked together in the same building? In a normal year, we’d have a party with cake and speeches, pictures and laughter, people standing in line to congratulate him, to pat him on the back, to hug him. But this is not a normal year, in any sense of the word.
What do we do? We have a party in the new 2020 fashion — a drive-through party, with honking horns, cheers, signs, and well-wishers blowing kisses from their cars.
What a thing to be so loved, to be so respected. It’s likely every one of us would have a group of people who loved and respected us this much, but some of us might have fewer in that group than Mr. M.
But then again, not all of us are legends.