Author's Note: This story is situated in Canada and hence the different spelling and word choices. I hope it doesn't interfere with your enjoyment. It's the story of a man who has a hard time accepting good fortune.
As always, I am indebted to Erik Thread for his skillful, insightful and helpful editing.
Any errors are mine alone.
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Chapter 1:
My name is Richard Campbell, but most of my friends call me Rick. Not Rich, and definitely not Dick! I have decided to write this story to explain what has happened to me in the past eight months. To put it succinctly, I have undergone a complete metamorphosis. I am not the innocent, inexperienced boy-man I was a short time ago. My life is not the same as it was eight months ago. My future is not the same as it might have been. It is far, far better. But it has not been without its difficult and frightening moments.
I am a high school history teacher. It's what I set out to become some seven years ago at the tender age of nineteen. Having just completed my freshman year at college, I was uncertain about my future. What changed all that was a tidy inheritance from my maternal grandmother.
Granny Eliza Cochran had passed away after a full life of self-education and travel. Widowed at a young age, she had a thirst for knowledge and adventure that she maintained her entire life. Even at age eighty, she would think nothing of trekking through the Tibetan mountains, or some arid wasteland in remote eastern Turkey.
I'm sure I know why she chose me for this bequest. It was because I would listen for hours, enthralled with stories of her travels, continually interrupting to ask questions. She correctly believed I had inherited her love of exploration and the history that went with it. But what really confirmed my path to the future was my first journey.
She'd left me the better part of fifty thousand dollars with the explicit instructions I use the money only for travel during my summers off from school. She made it plain that she believed I would learn more in those two-plus months than I would during my entire year at college. She was right.
I am sure it was the intended consequence of her gift to sustain and enhance my interest in travel and history. She was very perceptive in that belief. From that very first summer in the eastern Mediterranean, I was hooked.
I chose that region because it was the birthplace of western civilization. I made copious notes along the way which ultimately morphed into a journal of that first summer. It began in Athens, then on to Alexandria, Cairo, and Karnak before shifting to Mount Sinai. From there to Israel, the Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes, and Patmos, with side trips to Istanbul and Ephesus, Turkey. A time-out back on the Greek mainland, and then to Italy.
My head was swimming in history when I returned to North America. I couldn't put it all into perspective at first, but my notes were carefully organized in my laptop, and accompanied by hundreds of photos I took with my now-obsolete digital camera. I can't count the hours I sat daydreaming and reminiscing as I ran the slideshows of my pictures.
I knew when I returned to my sophomore classes in September that I wanted to become a history teacher. If I caught this "disease" so easily, I hoped I might cause it to be contagious to others. I immediately went about enrolling in courses that would lead to a degree in education, specifically history.
I still had vivid, ugly memories of the history teachers I had endured through my high school years. In other circumstances, they might have driven out any interest I had in the subject. Too often, they were obsessed with dates and facts and names without any context of the times in which they took place. With the legacy of my grandmother, I was determined to put a stop to that. I might be a lone voice in the wilderness, but I would damn well try.
With my life-course now being decided, I carefully managed my economic resources to insure that I could take advantage of my grandmother's gift for at least the next three summers. My parents carefully put away money in my youth to provide for my post-secondary education, and since I was an only child, I got the full value of their thoughtful planning. So, with my financial obligations securely in hand, I dedicated myself to my future mission; spreading the word about the joy of history.
There was one side-effect to this dedication. I was single and not dating. I encountered several young women, both at high school and college, but the liaisons were fleeting and uneventful. I wasn't a virgin exactly, but I was close to it. Once I decided on my future, women became a secondary interest in my life.
Now, just to make it plain, I'm a healthy, heterosexual male with the usual hormonal urges. I simply hadn't encountered a female that aroused my interest to the point where I wanted to become involved with her. She would either lack my enthusiasm for my chosen future, or had designs on a financial security that I likely wouldn't be able to accommodate.
I graduated magna cum laude in European history, with a very good grade in my minor -- economics. My final essay was written on the economic history of Europe, and I found the assignment relatively easy to do. My excellent grade was enhanced by the satisfaction I took in expressing my opinions on the topic. Those opinions didn't always conform to accepted convention, but I backed them up with reason and reference, hence the superior mark. Despite the urging of my professor, I had no intention of entering the Masters program.
After graduation, I spent the next two years traveling through Great Britain, Europe and the Middle East, with side trips to Australia. From the beginning, I found the secret of inexpensive travel as so many other students had. Hostels, hooking up with other groups willing to share rides and rooms, hitchhiking, and all the other low cost alternatives. As a result, I was easily able to stretch Granny Eliza's bequest the additional two years.
When I began to run short of money, I knew I should find work to support my passion. History teaching positions were not plentiful, so I took a job in a book store while I waited for my opportunity. That opportunity came the following year.
I applied and was accepted at Georgia Straits High School in Little River, British Columbia. It was only a day's drive and a ferry ride from my home town, Vancouver, but it was a wonderful community set on Vancouver Island. Prosperous from tourism, retirement communities, and a nearby military base, it was an ideal place in which to begin my career. I reported for duty in early September with my recently minted teaching certificate and my union card in hand.
The school surprised me. It was relatively modern, and larger than I expected with over six hundred students and nearly fifty staff. My classes would be populated by an average of twenty-five students. I only hoped that I could develop enthusiasm for my favorite subject among at least a handful of those young minds. I had some experience with class management during my last two years of college thanks to the student-teacher program. I also had my own ideas of what I wanted to accomplish.
As a "rookie" teacher, I was given a greater share of some of the less desirable assignments. Monitoring the halls during the lunch period, detentions, chaperoning social events, and grounds clean-up detail. They weren't terribly onerous, but they were not what I was trained for. On the other hand, I knew it was an obligation that every new teacher would have to accept, so I mentally shrugged and got on with it.
My first months flew by. I developed somewhat of a flair for the dramatic in the classroom as I recounted the stories of the Minoans of Crete, comparing their accomplishments to the Pharaohs of Egypt. I tried to paint a picture of those times for my students, dispelling myth with facts. The pyramids were built with hired labour, not slaves as so many believed.
I was delighted that a number of my students responded positively to my enthusiasm. Often, my classes were accompanied by slide shows featuring the pictures I had taken, combined with others I downloaded from the internet. I wanted to make the class as interesting as possible and still get the lesson taught. After all, there was a curriculum to follow.
But to get to the meat of this story, I have to recount the events surrounding a party held just before the Christmas-New Years break. I didn't have any meaningful social contact with other teachers up to that point. I was too busy getting myself established in my profession. I expected I would find some personal time in the New Year.
It was a staff party and attendance was mandatory. Not that I wouldn't have gone anyway, but without a date I might have been a little less comfortable. Astrid solved that problem.
