Short Story: This is How it Ends

"What's that you're working on? It looks like a test."

Sarah paused before responding. The whole point of having a pile of essays to mark was to avoid talking to anyone on the flight. And, to make things worse, the chatterbox was unperturbed by the aisle space between them.



"Why didn't you correct that spelling mistake?"

She didn't even have the chance to answer. The man to her right had an abundance of self-importance and multiple fingerprints on his spectacles that made his eyes hard to read. 

"It's not the point of the exercise." She kept her voice low, hoping to compensate for his broadcast.

"What do you mean? Aren't you an English teacher?"

"If I highlight every mistake this child makes, I make her reluctant to submit a piece of writing to me again."

"Oh. So how do you  make sure they learn from the mistake if they don't know they are making it?"

Sarah tightened her grip on her red pen, wishing she could use it to cut two small smiles into his cheeks. "Few people will ever handwrite anything for public consumption after they leave school. Most of us -- even you, I'm sure -- make use of spelling checkers on our devices. My focus is on this child's ability to reason, to argue and to defend a stance."

"English teachers do all that? Hell man, back in my day it was all about learning rules and memorising things. I hated it. I sat at the front of the class because all the boys in the back were bullies. You might not think it from looking at me now, but I was small at school. I got bullied a lot. And especially because English was not even my first language."

The flight attendant stepped up with his safety demonstration kit. "Sir, would you keep it down, please? We're about to start."

Sarah could see him resisting the urge to chime back a response, but he managed to contain himself. She took the gap to start marking again.

"Do you think that if they installed a camera here to show all the people on this plane how inattentive they are to the safety demonstration then it will shame them into listening?"

She was halfway through a sentence when she realised he was waiting for an answer.

"Probably not."

"Now tell me, please. How do you deal with a situation like this in your classroom?"

In between blinks, Sarah steeled herself. "It's more about developing relationships than taking an authoritarian stance." She looked down at her pile of essays waiting for her appraisal, but she knew he would persist until he had got what he wanted from the conversation.

"Yes, but what about those boys that are rude and nasty to you yet they have heaps of untapped potential. I remember a guy called Tommy Spriggs in my year. Bolshy as they come. He gave our Biology teacher hell. I think he wanted to get into her pants, if you know what I mean."

She could see, from the corner of her eye, how passengers several rows back craned their necks to glance at the source of the guffawing.

"Anyway, and now he's a highly successful businessman. He's just bought his second yacht and, as I understand it, spends most of his time sailing around the French Riviera." He wiped some clotted spittle from the sides of his mouth. "How would you have dealt with Tommy?"

"I actually know and teach several Tommies. As I said, it's about the relationship. Sometimes it happens that you meet them outside of the classroom, say at sports events or during playground duty, and that's where a connection is forged. But, then again, some Tommies don't want to be reached. I allow for that too." She felt a distinct forewarning in her neck, and turned away from him to avoid a crick.

"Hmm. But I suppose you are lucky because no boy has ever tried to get into your pants so they would probably trust you more."

Before Sarah could respond, she felt the wheels of the plane gather speed and she braced for take-off. The man sitting to her left thought it would be a good idea to occupy as much of the legroom as he could, with the result that his thighs not only pressed against hers but also the woman's in the window seat. Manspreading. She'd heard of it, but never experienced it in such close quarters. She wondered what kind of lingo would be used to describe the man across the aisle. A number of adjectives sprang to mind, and not all of them were undeserved descriptions of the stranger. 

Three rows back she could hear her colleagues debating the physics of take-off. Were she able to catch all they said, she was sure that she would have preferred their banter to the third degree waiting for her once the plane levelled out. As the nose lined up with the tail, she decided she was not going to suggest introductions with the stranger. It would encourage a familiarity she had hoped to avoid. The essays were gnawing at her conscience, waiting to be marked. She flicked on the overhead light, and continued. 

"Can I read one?"

 If it will make you shut up. "Sure." She rifled through the pile for a student whose work she considered good overall.

"My god, how do you read this handwriting? It's bloody awful. When I was at school, we were taught how to write. What do you call this? Chicken scratches."

"She actually has difficulty writing. Her hands were damaged in a shack fire."

They weren't, but it silenced him. She continued to mark. 

"I don't like what she wrote. What mark are you going to give it?"

"I haven't read it yet, so I will tell you once I do."

"Because her story has flaws in it. I think she deserves a bad mark. And that whole bit about the protests. It's not believable."

"She's seventeen. Don't you think you should cut her a bit of slack? It's not like she's trying to compete with J.M. Coetzee."

"Don't ever compare this drivel with Coetzee." He slapped the essay for good measure. "You know, reading this essay has helped me to understand why the education in this country is in crisis. It's not the students that are bad. It's you -- the teachers."

Strike two.

"Tell me, when you qualified at university, what degree did you get? Was it a... Masters?" He employed the sing-song speech pattern of nursery rhymes that annoyed her no end.  "Because I got my MBA a few years ago. Not that it matters. But what did you get? I mean, my MBA means that I can run my business -- which is a successful engineering company that makes places quiet."

Sarah smirked at the paradox.

"You know, I like to think of myself as the poor man's Elon Musk. I built up my company from nothing. Nothing. I studied engineering and look at me now. I have a comfortable life, a wife and daughter I adore, and I am responsible for solving problems. In fact, I spent my whole day today solving the problem of an employee with a victim mentality. I realise I am lucky in that I can choose who I work with -- unlike you, who has to put up with whoever is in your class. And this person in particular I will choose not to work with. When I get home, I am drafting papers for his redundancy. What was my question again?"
  
Suddenly it all made sense. Sarah could see him, thirty-something years ago, sitting at the front of his class, a nerdy little boy who liked to build things and experiment with the laws of physics for fun while his classmates used him as a punching bag when they weren't smoking in the toilets or chatting up girls. And somewhere along the way a teacher had slighted him and made him feel insignificant to the point that he set out to Prove Them All Wrong and Make Something of Himself. She felt a flicker of pity as she looked at the Emotional Pac-Man opposite her who was so desperate to prove his intelligence and worth, that he resorted to lording it over others and boosting his ego with put-downs. The entire conversation had nothing to do with her or her job or whether she was good or bad in the classroom. It was about revenge for all his naysayers.

"Would you like to buy something from the trolley?" The flight attendant wore her expression like a veneer. 

Sarah shook her head. But she would have liked to bribe her way out of the situation she was in. In truth, she would have marked another hundred essays to be away from the Pac-Man. The crick in her neck began to throb. She wasn't even listening to him anymore; he seemed content with a vacant expression of interest while he outlined his personal philosophy for her and the people within earshot. It was as though he had rehearsed this speech in front of the mirror for years. Her marking abandoned, she tried to think of a way to opt out of the conversation. Rudeness was not her style, but he had overstepped the boundaries of politeness and they were only half an hour into the flight. She glanced at the people around her in their bubbles of isolation created by headphones and screens. The chuckling from the science teachers behind her persisted, and they raised their glasses of wine as the turbulence kicked in. If only they were in her place: Pac-Man would not have found a soapbox amongst equals. Every time she tried to seize an opportunity during the nanosecond lulls he allowed to draw breath, he would silence her with yet another tirade. She gave up trying. The whole experience was exhausting her to the point of tears. Tears for her incomplete marking, for her inability to verbally flip the bird at him so that he would leave her alone, for the long weekend of colleagues and conferences that lay ahead. This is how it ends, she thought. I will die of boredom on this flight and they will find my body next to this man who will use the story as some kind of Damascus Road experience in his life to show how intelligent and enlightened he is.

It was a relief when she felt the plane begin its descent. The cabin lights were turned off and his mouth closed when he could no longer see her reactions to what she was saying. On landing, she could not wait to get away from him. They exchanged half-hearted farewells. She didn't get his name or volunteer her own.

"Sarah, who was that man you were talking to on the plane? Are you going to meet up with him later?"  

"I don't know his name."

"I saw that too. Didn't you say you were going to mark on the flight?"

"I tried. He didn't give me a chance."

"But you spoke for two hours. What did you talk about?"

"I didn't talk to him; he spoke at me." Sarah could tell they didn't believe her. They responded with ways in which they would have shut him down.

She trailed the group as they made their way to the arrivals hall. A hand landed on her shoulder.

"Hi, I'm Jeb. I was in the row behind you. I couldn't say anything on the flight, but I'm sorry you got stuck next to that..."

"Jerk?"

"I was going to say 'arsehole', but that works."

Sarah smiled. "Nice to meet you." She extended a hand. "Sarah."    

"Yes, the English teacher."

"Actually, I teach History. English is my other subject." 
 
"That's a relief. I teach German and I would like to think about something other than grammar for a while." He gestured at the automatic doors that led to the arrivals hall where their colleagues were waiting. "Shall we?"

She nodded. I was wrong. This is how it ends.