Aug
The Face You Show…
Be careful as to which face you show. It determines how the world will treat you.
This lesson came to me in high school. There was a math teacher who was a very formidable woman. Her demeanor was intimidating, brusque and unfriendly. She was not the type who inspired interest in her subject. A smile was uncommon. It seemed to students that the only time they saw her smile was when she was among other teachers.
As you may have surmised, the students did not feel warmly toward this teacher. They did not take time to see if there was another person behind the hard face. All they saw was a firm and unfriendly woman.
One incident was puzzling. There had been a club at the school wherein students volunteered to help grammar school children with their lessons. It had a large and active membership. When the original club moderator transferred to another school, the math teacher took over. About a quarter of the members quit on hearing the news. She changed the club’s mission from tutoring to visiting an old age home. That drove off another batch of members. While the teacher never went to the home herself, she was always at club business meetings. The meetings were a session where she gave orders without so much as a grin. More members quit, and the club did not last the semester.
The lesson came with an incident involving one of her students. He was a red-headed harp who looked like Alfred E. Newman. The math teacher had accused him of cheating on a test. He protested his innocence. The student had never done anything like that before. The student and his parents protested vehemently. To placate the teacher, the principal and family came to an agreement that the boy would transfer to another school the next year. Other students felt that the teacher was too cold to admit she may have made a mistake. Some though it was personal.
With all this in mind, it is easy to see that students regarded the math teacher as cold, implacable and heartless. That was the impression she made, and nobody had seen anything to refute it. The last day of school turned out to be a revelation. At the end of class, the student who had been accused of cheating presented her with a card and plastic statue. It was one of the Weird-Oh statues that depicted a wacky teacher. The other students thought for sure that this teacher would come down on him like a ton of bricks. What happened next surprised everyone.
The teacher acted as if she had just been hit in the face. She stepped back, hesitated ,and tried to talk, There was a tear in her eye. Her words were strained. She said something to the student, and he merely replied, “This is from me and my parents.” Nobody knows what was in the card, nor what else he said to her. The tears started flowing. The formidable teacher was now a very vulnerable and very hurt woman. It was unexpected and startling.
“Aren’t there any men who are going to do something about this?” she cried as we left the room. But the students left, not knowing what she meant. I am sure that even if they knew, they would not have helped. The last they saw was the teacher crying and sobbing. What happened outside of class were a few nervous jokes In retrospect, I am certain that teacher could have used a moment of compassion. However, based on years of hard stares and browbeating and bullying, nobody would have though of it.
I had never seen someone so totally deflated so easily. I had no idea that behind all the meanness was woman with feelings. Most surprising was that she had expected us, at that moment, to treat her as something different than what she had shown all along.
The lesson was learned. People treat you by the face you show. If you are cold and intimidating, you have no place expecting compassion. If you clown and joke about everything, you cannot expect to be taken seriously. If you are grim and morbid, you cannot expect to be greeted with optimism and cheer. These are a few examples of it.
Once more, we come to the Mannar Rune. When what we show and whom we are happen to be two different things, the results can be unpleasant. A false face or a wrong face can put you in the wrong space.
