I looked at the wall where teachers were standing.
Mr. Reynolds was in the second cluster from the left.
He was not smiling the way he had smiled in third period. He had the specific expression of a man who has made a significant public error and is in the process of understanding its full dimensions.
My mother spoke for four minutes.
She did not grandstand. She did not address the morning’s events or the laughter or the teacher’s comment, because that was not who she was. She spoke about service — what it required and what it gave back. She said that the job was not about being impressive, which surprised me, though later I understood it. She said the job was about being useful, and that being useful sometimes required doing things that other people couldn’t see or understand or verify, and that this was fine, because the purpose of doing something useful was the usefulness of it rather than the recognition.
