The Headmasters Finds His Student Equal and Other Curiosities
By: Paul Hickman
Tags: Fiction Writing, Communication, Understanding, Isolation, Truth Realisation

Tommy stood, with the other students on his course, in the vestibule of his form tutor’s study. Tutorials were something he loathed and tried to avoid at any cost. Tommy was different, you see. His mother had once been a Nun that had fallen from God’s grace and had been asked to leave the ‘Mother of St Teresa’s House’ where she had lived all her adult life. When he had asked her why this had happened, she had lovingly looked at him and gently said, “I had to leave because they could not understand it.”

His mother was beautiful and took up ballet when she left the convent. She was mildly successful and had toured the UK, performing in medium-sized venues. As you would expect, his mother was a very spiritual woman and done everything she could to bring him up, sharing her graceful values.

Tommy didn’t relate very well with most people his own age and especially not with the students on his course. So, Tommy looked around this familiar daunting antechamber of the headmaster’s study. The head was busy reading something, and obviously, he was not quite ready to see the group even though the allotted time had come and gone some 15 minutes ago. He wondered if he would have been happier as he was as a child involved in his own self-study aided by his mother rather than stuck in this God-forsaken place where every nook and cranny seemed packed with historical cock-ups. In the room was a chest shackled and padlocked at both ends. What the hell was in it they were so keen for people not to see?

“You can all make your way in now.”

The students all stepped hurriedly into the study, eager to make up the fifteen lost minutes and return to staring at their computer screens using Google ever to explore the mountainous loads of opinionated garbage on the internet. The headmaster droned on about only using trusted sites. Dot Edu and dot-gov seemed to be entirely trustworthy, and on and on he went. AT last, he finished and said to them, “You can all go now, make sure you are very careful about the information you include in your report work. Tommy, can you remain behind? Please, there are a few extra points that I want to go over with you.” All the other group members left with speed, eager to get to the ‘common room’ before hitting the library, such fun!

“Tommy, you write some brilliant stuff, but it has no reference sources in it at all. Don’t get me wrong. I love all the work you write. It has such a poetic charm to it. It really is a good read, but really, dear boy, you cannot just pluck figures and other info out of the air and not clearly state the source where you got it from.”

“Why not?”

“Eh? This is the world of academia where every I and every T has to be dotted and crossed. You just can’t write whatever you think you know.”

“Why not?”

‘My word, you are like a stuck record today. Stop saying ‘why not?’ and ask something else as this is going to get us nowhere.”

Tommy was about to repeat it, but he did get the point, this game which he and his mother used to enjoy so much when he was an ‘overzealous seeker after the truth’ of anything and everything, took up too much time for anyone clocking up cost on an hourly pay rate.

“A lot of the things I write I just ‘know’. I am not forever on a computer. I sit, and I commune with higher powers.”

“Eh? You have imaginary friends?”

“Yes.”

“You are very strange, Tommy, but you have such enormous potential. You will walk this course and get a 1.1. easily. Why not just do as I have asked and put a reference in your writing to say where your information came from? Not too much to ask, is it?”

“It is a lot harder than you think it will be.”

“Please explain, Tommy I have always got time for my brightest student. So, what are you trying to say to me? Do tell, please?”

“Well, my mother told me that we do not need our senses to tell us when things are true or not. We can just act with faith. My mother told me that we know when things are true instinctively and I never once got away telling my mum a lie. She spotted them as soon as I gave voice to them.”

“She is a remarkable woman, is your mum. I have been to see her dance on numerous occasions a very graceful mover. Her wisdom, I take it, came from her time as a ‘bride of Christ’. I Never did work out just why or how she left that order. And to compound all that, she puts you in a Catholic University. It makes not a lot of sense to me. I have to say.”

“That’s exactly what she said to me. She really got why she had chosen her life, and not one of her peers understood her reasoning or motives. AND I have to say that she passed that on to me. I used to read a lot of stuff on the internet and, in the end, just dismiss it all because something inside me said that it was tripe. “

“You write by instinct?”

“Sort of. I had heard this pearl of wisdom somewhere. I will try to recite it as I first heard it, as there are many versions of the same thing on the internet now. People change one or two words you know, and then claim they have discovered something new. When it isn’t new at all. My remembered version will not be actually what I read years ago but a version that I understand. Do you see?”

“So many bloody words! If you say so.”

“When a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one present to hear it crash to the ground, does that mean that the tree has not fallen? That is what I think I read, and to me, it is so obvious what is being said. Just because no one has reported that the tree has fallen; that is irrelevant; the fact is that it has. In the same way, because I have no evidence to cite in a written report, that does not mean that what I have said is not true. Do you see?”

“Yes, I do. BUT Tommy, can’t you see the danger in all this wild thinking of your mothers? You have to trust the person that is telling you something? Unfortunately, not everyone is trustworthy, and a lot of people are lazy and just make stuff up.”

“My mum told me that you are correct. But, unfortunately, the whole of the human race makes stuff up all the time to support facts that they do not understand or believe. It’s why people get in a hopeless muddle and totally lose the plot. It’s how the police catch criminals. If they interview a group of people and everyone tells exactly the same story, they know it is a lie.”

“NO, the opposite, it means it is true! They all say the same thing because it is true. It stands to reason. Hang on, I see what you mean, every report in every newspaper, about the same event are all slightly different. It does depend upon who is witnessing the event, and how they see the event, as to how they report it.”

“Exactly, so logically every FACT that you read depends on who wrote it.”

“Tell me more.”

“Well, so far, we have only discussed things people see, BUT the same is true for every one of our five senses. For example, my mum used to wear a perfume she thought was great. I told her that to me. It smelt like a rat’s piss. Mum had a furry cardigan she loved. Touching it made my teeth go all on edge. I can eat choc ice by biting lumps off and my mum can’t.”

“Your conclusion is?”

“Nothing is absolutely true. We believe in people that we trust the most. People we have faith in. No one is perfect. If someone though is 80% spot on, then I can live with that.”

“And how do you know they are right or wrong?”

“Mostly, I just think about it. The human mind seems to have this built-in talent for spotting right and rejecting wrong. It has never let me down yet.”

A significant silence followed.

“This built-in talent. Do some people call it the 6th sense?”

“The one’s that do not understand it do.”

“What do you call it?”

“Oh, there are a variety of names for it. Sometimes I use one, and sometimes another. It depends on who I am talking to about it. You are a Catholic, so to you, I would say it is God. I would tell a Christian it is the Holy Spirit, a medium? I would use the term SPIRIT or guide. A Muslim Allah, Taoist, what does a Taoist call, God? Zen is it Zen?”

Another significant silence followed.

“I just had a thought. Your name is Tommy. When she was younger was your mother a fan of the 60’s band The Who?”

“Yes, why?”

“One of their greatest albums has just made sense to me. It is called Tommy. A story about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid who is a genius. He cannot tell anyone anything. He cannot hear anything that has made him a genius. He hasn’t seen, heard, communicated anything. His genius JUST IS. What does this all mean? His genius was inside him all the time! See! Good old Townshend.”

“The Who as a band needs a certificate? Genius does not rely on clever educators but on careful contemplation. Anyone can be anything that they think they can.”

“That is it, Tommy!”

“What is?”

“Life and truth are experienced and not third-hand knowledge. You are right. We know the truth instinctively. Faith is the key.”

“Don’t get it?”

“You come out of your house and go to get in a car that isn’t there. Where is the car?”

“I forgot where I parked it?”

“Good thinking. Do you often do that?”

“No.”

“Think of anything else?”

“It’s been stolen.”

“Good thinking.”

“Do you reckon it has?”

“No.”

“My mum has a spare set of keys.”

“Is it like her to take the car?”

“No, she always asks first, texts me.”

“We are a bit stuck.”

“I would call the police and report it…. Um, tell them it isn’t where I thought that I left it.”

“and they say?”

“Do you think it has been stolen?”

“And round and round we go. You already know the next questions that they will ask you because you asked them of yourself first. But, no, they have things we have not got. Access to traffic cameras, number plate recognition software, criminal databases, the experience of dealing with…. Misplaced cars. AND most importantly CONFIDENCE and Faith that they will locate it.?”

And they laughed, for neither knew why this conversation had started or where it was going. It was just all a story to help them understand something they did not really understand.

And there you have it. When we don’t understand something, we make up a story that may be true or false. Its purpose is not about right or wrong. Its purpose is just to aid understanding, that’s all. So, me and you, we are never confused.

“Yes, we are, we just said.”

“No, we aren’t. So, if 2 and 2 happen to make five, it’s not wrong. It is all a misunderstanding.”

“Prove it! Cite something off the internet to prove it.”

“It is hard to prove something is wrong. I would rather prove something is right.”

“Really?”

“No.!”