"Ah, the Browning Version," I thought when a former student came by to praise me

"Ah, the Browning Version," I thought when a former student came by to praise me after my second and final class ended at 12:10.   He told me how wonderful I was and how much he'd learned from me.
 "Oh, thank you," I told him, wondering who'd put him up to this.
When I was a child and someone would be nice to me--maybe even two people--I'd reason that they'd heard I was going to die so they should be nice to me in the short period remaining.
"That's heartwarming in a profession when a teacher is accustomed to heartbreaking experiences"
(Maybe I didn't tell him exactly that.)
My first class had listened impassively as I told them about active listening and showed them and made them do.  (Do means coming up to the overhead, fairly new in 1964, and showing us something.)  The second class had been a little bit  less annoying (or maybe I should say annoyed by me and all my efforst0 than the first class, but that wasn't exactly uplifting (heartwarming).  I was in good form--enthusiastic, fully engaged, never bored, just boring--, but my students were not interested or engaged, and they don't know the word enthusiastic.  Only I was any of these things.  ("When in a class of 32 your reach one student, you have 31 to go."  I may have one or two down, which is to say up.)  I'll write more about seeing Robert S. on the stairs laden with carrot cake, flowers, and $200.00, the note from my office mate Bob about Tonga, Algeria, Spain, and Serramonte beckoning & my response.  But I'll end with the part about the Browning version, the student kind to an old professor about to retire as he faces his life of failure as a teacher.  (In The Browning Version, play and film, it's even worse because the teacher also sees his marriage dissolving the same semester.  Having already dissolved two marriages, I'm happily ensconced in a relationshp that works---for the moment.  We never know when an earthquake will shake up our world.
He said he's seen something about me online.
"Something mean?" I asked, reflecting.
"It talked about all the countries you'd lived in, so I think maybe that's why you are so good."
Oh, he wasn't talking about Teacher Review.  He was talking about what I'd written about myself on Faculty in Review. 
The Teacher Review says, "And she makes you sing with her."

That's right.  That's what she does, and that's what she did today in both classes before the visit by the Browning version.