‘Be careful, pet!’ called out the Yummy Mummy to her small daughter, as they both flew in ever-quicker circles on their shiny new scooters at the very top of the Prom, each of them, in turn, almost knocking me over.
‘You’ve got to watch where you’re going now, those are old people there…’
So it’s finally happened.
Recently, I’ve gone from being addressed by my full title (rather than my first name) by some of the newest members of staff in my school, to occasionally being addressed as ‘Madam’ in shops, to now, today, just around lunchtime, while out for my walk, being described to a small child as an ‘old person’. The sort of person who might crumble if she careered into me on her scooter.
My life, it would seem, is over.
I’ve felt invisible for a very long time, and I don’t say that to garner any sympathy. I’m just not one of those people who stands out in a crowd. I’m not especially gregarious: I am more a listener than a talker, apart from when I know someone really very well. I don’t dress in an especially showy way: dark colours will probably be involved. And whereas I like the finer things like jewellery, my taste can be summed up by the colleague who once asked me why I ‘always wear those sort of small silver earrings which you can’t really even see underneath all that hair.’ And that’s fine. That’s just who I am, and it’s been that way for as long as I can remember.
But I object to becoming visible by virtue of seeming old.
It’s a bit like that phenomenon when you make jokes or complaints about your closest family members or friends, and it’s ok for you to say those things about them (or for them to say things about you) but when somebody outside that close circle does it… no. Just no. That’s most definitely not all right. I make jokes about myself being old (well, ageing…) all the time: when my students ask me my age, I tell them, depending on my mood, that I am 107 next birthday or even that I’m so old that I went to school with William Shakespeare. I can see the whirring calculators in their eyes as they look at me. Sometimes they try to pin me down. ‘Naw, Miss, but like, be serious for a minute. You’re not 107. But like, how long have you been a teacher?’ They frantically try to work it out, but I won’t be drawn, beyond enjoying telling them that I’ve been teaching in their school for longer than any of them have been alive. That I taught some of their parents. That I taught several of the younger teachers too…
It’s a strange thing, though, isn’t it? Trying to figure out how others see us. I try to pretend that nobody sees me at all, but my work brings me into contact with just over 1000 people every day, so I can’t pretend I’m actually invisible. I put on my ‘teacher act’ with my ‘teacher clothes’, and it seems to be convincing enough, most days. I do a good sideline in ironic humour and the students tolerate my eccentricity. One of my all-time favourite tv dramas, The Newsroom, features a character so like me that it’s actually uncanny. Rewatching it over the Christmas break has given me some kind of impression, I suppose, of an acceptable version of how I might appear to others. But nobody could accuse that character of being ‘an old person’, even if she was bundled up in a winter coat, hat, scarf and gloves against a NE gale…
But it’s not just how people see me, as me. What keeps me awake at night is how people see all teachers, just now. The anti-teacher commentary on social media and in some newspapers has always been there, but since the first Covid-19 lockdown in Spring 2020, it’s become truly poisonous. It’s started again recently, with the question of whether schools would reopen after Christmas; with speculation mounting as I write this about Boris Johnson announcing another full-scale January lockdown, it’s bound to go into overdrive. There has been a freezing tidal wave of people bellowing that teachers are lazy, feckless holiday-grabbers who simply don’t want to work. That all our future holidays should be cancelled (and pay halted), just so that we can have the same benefits as everyone else of trying to keep ourselves and our loved-ones safe. I even saw a headline screaming that we were actually all abusing the children in our care. It didn’t make me not want to be a teacher anymore, because I know the truth and the integrity of my profession. It did make me want to give up on life, though. And because of that, I’m having to drag myself out of the seductive undertow of social media for a while.
I’m not an expert selfie-taker. It’s not for me, this world of facetune and filters and fun stickers. A couple of months ago, I finally upgraded my phone (after many years) and have been discovering something called ‘portrait mode’. It blurs the background slightly so that the person being photographed is foregrounded by focus, and you can choose from a range of lighting settings. I’ve played with it a bit, but will never be an expert.
Off our phone screens, portrait mode is how we’re seen by the people around us. In my case, I suspect that the background is in clear focus while I myself am blurred, and that’s just fine, because I find it difficult to let people get to know me really well. When I go for one of my coastal walks and decide to share a photo or two, I find it far more likely that my friends would like to see the beautiful views I’ve enjoyed, rather than seeing how windswept or cold or simply, downright old I look.
As 2021 begins, my portrait mode is this: as a teacher, I will continue to do everything I can for the young people in my care. I will keep in touch with every single one of them (as I did last time this happened), making sure they’re ok as well as trying to keep them learning. I will keep in touch with my colleagues, whether that’s through Zoom meetings, emails or a few friendly Whatsapp groups. As me… what I’ll do is more invisible. I’ll read a lot. I’ll go for walks. I’ll watch some tv. I’ll follow my 2021 plan to try to recover my skill in music. I’ll stay in constant contact with those few people who mean the most.
And if this means I’m an easily felled old person, who needs to be viewed with caution, then maybe that’s just something I can blur into the background. Or light in a flattering way.
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