Neil Whitfield and John Traas

As I thought he might, in My past walked by me… Neil followed up his passing comment with a fuller post on John Traas, my old French teacher and one of Neil's teaching colleagues.

Mr Traas, you see I still think of him with the Mr automatically attached!, tried to teach me French for two years. Neil quotes me in part as saying:

 Now that’s interesting Neil. Based on what you said, I assume that it is the same John, one of the problems for teachers, if problem is the right word, is that their students see them in one dimension. I see John in the mid school classroom in front of me, as a teacher, not a person.

This issue, seeing people in slices dictated by our relationships with them, is something that I have become increasingly conscious of as I have grown older. One of the joys of biography is that it attempts to come to grips with a person as a person, not a slice.

I couldn't help looking at the dates on the comments: August 2006. Dear that seems a long time ago, just the start of the continuing blogging relationship between the two of us.