My maths teacher failed girls

When I was in school I had this horrible maths teacher. Didn’t we all?

Once, he told us teenage girls that as soon as we left school we’d get fat. “You’ll balloon,” he informed us smugly – and the boys laughed.

Funny how that’s the only thing he ever taught me, even if it wasn’t correct. Yes, some of us got fat, but some got fit, some developed eating disorders, and some got sick and died.

I wish he’d said instead that we were still growing, that our bodies would change throughout our lives, that our hormones would fluctuate, that our metabolisms would slow, that our muscle mass would naturally decrease over time, and that we’d find it increasingly harder to maintain a steady weight.

I wish he’d said, factually, kindly, that young joints will start creaking and youthful hair will thin, and that this is not personal neglectfulness, but a fact of science.

I wish he’d said that every physical thing degenerates, that aches and old injuries will niggle, and that this is the completely normal process of ageing.

It does not happen because we “let ourselves go”. It is not a moral failure.

I wish he’d pointed to the rest of the animal kingdom and indicated how all creatures age, losing tone, gaining lumps and bumps, their colour fading and their skin slackening, even though they have not willfully “let themselves go”.

I look at my old dog, her young spirit shining in her filmy eyes, and she still gets excited about walks, even though she can only totter to the first river bank before lying down.

Nothing has changed outwardly – not her diet, nor her care, nor her lust for living – yet of course she has aged.

I wish he’d said that ageing is not a failing, but an inevitability, and that no one has the body they had at 17 when they’re 47, nor the clear eyes and shiny hair of youth at 60 – not without being forever hungry, not without making the curatorship of your body into a singular obsession.

I wish he’d said, yes, you won’t look like a teenager forever, but happily you won’t feel like one either – and you will never have to sit through another maths class again!

I wish he’d said nothing at all, and left it to the biology teacher.

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