Well I eventually found a teaching job at a boys secondary modern school where I discovered the real meaning of the word "WORK". I found myself mentally and physically exhausted at the end of every day. While the job did and still has many drawbacks, endless paperwork, poor public image, low wages and some evil kids there are advantages. That smile on a child's face when they finally understands what teacher is talking about makes it all worthwhile. During my years as a mathematics teacher I became involved in outdoor pursuits, first by helping out on camping holidays but later leading expeditions, taking kids rock climbing, camping, hiking, orienteering, caving, cycling and canoeing. Some kids even thought that they could outwalk me!
Look Look what
happened! For a couple of years I could even have been considered
fit and healthy.
Then after some twenty years, and a couple of different schools, finally reaching the dizzy heights of Head of Department, I found myself being thrown out on the scrap heap. That is the school where I was working closed and I was made redundant. It was then that I discovered that in today's world you are over the hill at forty and nobody wants to know you. As far as the job market is concerned, that is. It's a rotten feeling to think that the world no longer has any use for you. I spent the next year doing this and that, and got by somehow. I suppose it was because it was such a traumatic time for me that I found myself going out to get sex. Well, I found it for the first time since my teens. Towards the end of that year I found myself with a teaching job again. Back at the bottom with no prospect of any promotion. That goes to the young yuppies who come into a school with wonderful ideas, mess up and move on. Before you know it they are advisors to the government. About this time I found my way onto the net and met all you wonderful guys out there. I came out on the net and to a few friends, and I made a lot of new friends. So now I am a happy but poor gay man.
Although things may be bleak on the job front my personal life has really taken off and now I am happy with myself. If only I had come out twenty years ago!
And then came 2001 !
