Emily

She said she dreamt I’d come to her, notwithstanding our tumultuous past, telling me from behind her massive oak table that helping educate the youth has always been our family’s calling.

What’s there to debate? She’s a university president, her late mother was an algebra professor; and my own gallivanting mom and elder sister are teachers both, past and present.

Then there are the countless aunties, uncles, cousins and other relatives who nurtured generations of learners. My youngest daughter, Phoebe, before law school, is also now giving back to her alma mater.

Going back to that conversation three years ago, Emily had me going back to school, as the world took tentative steps out of the Covid-19 pandemic, both for postgraduate studies and to teach.

From textbooks to pounding the streets, passing on to criminology students what real-world police reporting knowledge I have, I somehow brought to their desks novelty as a journalist. I’d like to think so.

What affirmation came from newly minted police officers, those who “zoomed” with me as their lecturer online or who staggered half-awake into my 7 a.m. face-to-face classes.

Truly, the real rewards come in the form of those who say that with a little help from this Contrarian, they are able to police themselves from murdering the English language when writing their reports.

Ah, small victories are being won each day. I smile each time I remember those students of mine whom I hope would live up to their pledge to “serve and protect” and not be rogues in uniform because we already have too many scalawags.

The pen is mightier than the sword, I always tell each batch at the start of the semester, pointing out that cops use their pens more than their guns, as each incident they respond to must be accompanied by an incident report.

In a way, journalists and cops are the same in that we always strive to help correct what ails society, the first group by reporting and the second by preventing crimes or solving them.

Both undertakings entail tangling with words, and so both come with the potential to mangle the narrative. For those in law enforcement, not to shoot straight is to be a danger to society, and not to get the facts right is to jail the innocent or free the guilty.

But as everything that starts must ultimately come to an end — in some instances heartbreakingly so — I have to bid farewell to the ivory tower of education and focus on the gritty reality of journalism.

Thank you, Tita Ems, for the opportunity to be an educator, but as I had come to you, so must I bid you and the one thing you hold dear — teaching — goodbye. I have my other reason, but then you know what that is.