Lost Lad Read Free Page A

and size of fifteen years he considered the scope of the previous fifteen years.  1988!  It was nothing - yesterday!  It was hardly worth calling it 'the past'.  1988 was still very modern.  In that year kids were already walking around with personal stereos and wearing digital watches on their wrists.  Satellite TV's, video recorders, computers and electronic games were in nearly every home. 
                Fifteen years!  It was like a death sentence .... and he was wasting the little time which was left: the few precious remaining years!             
     
    Ten minutes later he was in the rest room washing his hands and, suddenly, noticed his pained old face in the mirror. 
                "Too right!  I am the picture of gloom."
     
    But it was his face, only older.  Inside he was the same.  He could go back much further than a brief fifteen years.  He could go back a length of time which made a big difference.  He could go back half a century to the 'stone age' when he wrote on a slate, using a slate pencil, under the stern authority of a Victorian schoolmarm.  He could go back 40 years to the time when .....
     
    Suddenly he looked at the reflected image and tried mentally to delete the many lines and other sad, sagging acquisitions of age.  He particularly studied the eyes.  Basically they had to be more or less the same eyes which had looked back at him in 1960 - a year he often thought about.  He imagined the constant cheerful expression of those eyes, as they once were.  Smiling, dancing eyes, lit up with joy...
                He leaned forward to the mirror -
                "Are you there, Dobba?  Are you still there ... somewhere?"
     
    At the end of that day he stood outside the 'Office of the Principal', but the old sign, with the old name 'W.M. Forbes Ph.D.',  had long been removed and now with egalitarian simplicity it said - 'Betty Lou Vanderburgh'.
                With the crumpled note, which had requested this interview, stuffed in his grey suit pocket, together with his contentious list of grievances, he was fearful, but, notwithstanding, now prepared to engage in a full scale confrontation.  He gave the door two firm knocks.
     
    It was opened at once by the child within causing a waft which sent several papers flying to the floor.  The great desk of Dr Forbes had been moved up to the wall, away from its previous intimidating 'position of power' which was directly in front of the summoned, subordinate member of staff.
     
    There were now two comfortable chairs in the centre of this room facing each other giving the impression of parity and democracy.  Simeon was not fooled.  For all her skill conveying the sympathetic and empathetic approach, Betty Lou was the same powerful dictator which Dr Forbes had once been.  The window dressing was different, but the reality was the same: what Betty Lou wanted, Betty Lou got!
     
    Instinctively he wanted to get stuck in.  Unilaterally he would resume making his students once more accountable.  He would return to writing grades on scripts.  He would give regular tests and end of semester examinations.  He would ignore the new computer generated reports and issue his own, which proclaimed grades, percentages and class positions together with real honest comments.  He would re-introduce and publicly display his league table of the ten best achievers of each class.  He would go it alone .... and he intended to tell her so! 
     
    He wanted to get it over with.  She could not actually fire him, but if open hostilities came to the surface, she, and her progressive Mafia of recently appointed disciples, could make life even more intolerable for Mr Hogg.  He steeled himself for the appalling scene to follow and its aftermath.
                However, it was she who had called the meeting, and it was she who would have to launch the reprimand - then he would respond.
     
    It