and you are....?

Today I returned to teach in a school I hadn’t been to for a while. Long enough for me to forget most of their names, but not their faces.

It was a strange sensation. On the previous occasion I ended up teaching there for several months - eventually I began to feel more like a regular teacher than a substitute. I had all the benefits (and challenges) that familiarity with the individual pupils breeds.

Today I was just there for the day - yet it felt almost as if I was still that regular teacher. As if I was returning from a period away to resume where I left off. As if they’d had substitute to cover for me.

A very odd feeling.

And eventually, in my mind, the names did start to reappear beside their respective faces - although, rather strangely, they seemed to come after everything else - the names came last.

It appears my memory works like this:
First the face, then the rest of the appearance. Next come the shadows - the people they got on well with, and those with whom they fought; the voices and the conversations. That was, bizarrely, followed by the memory of the comments I wrote about them in their report cards - what does that say about me? And finally the names - first names first, surnames struggling along behind.

The human mind is a wonderful, crazy thing. I’ll wager that the different people reading this will have altogether different memory sequences and patterns.

I’ve always envied people with good memories - mine is shocking. But in this job it’ll certainly get plenty of exercise.