It was A level results day

in Upover yesterday. There will have been cheers, jeers and tears too. Someone I know, whose family moved back to the UK seven years ago, sent me a message to say his results meant he had achieved his dream of getting in to the university of his choice to study what he wants to study.

There may not seem anything unusual about this until you know that he has lost both parents in the past three and a half years and has a disability as well. It has not been easy but he was focussed and then more and more focussed.

I thought of this and looked back at something I had written at the time. Yes, we were all concerned. He was struggling but he came to get some help from the Senior Cat and then some more from me. 

"I was so lucky," he told me in the email. No, he was not "lucky" at all. He worked for it. We were the lucky ones as we were in the fortunate position of being able to help.

Exam results days are stressful. I am grateful that the results no longer get printed in the state newspaper. My brother and I were never allowed to join the crowd of students outside the printing works for the first copies at some unearthly hour of the morning. 

"It won't change your results," Mum told us. She was probably more concerned about the Senior Cat tossing and turning all night. He would rush out as soon as he heard the paper land on the lawn. Our results would be looked at first of course but then he would spread out the paper and take the list of numbers and names he had been keeping so carefully and work his way through the other students in our classes. 

Every year the phone would ring all day. There would be disappointed parents and tearful teens of course. There would be sighs of resignation and queries about repeating subjects or queries about "perhaps leaving school".  

I remember one boy whose results were so bad that everyone queried them. It turned out he had simply handed in papers which were nonsense because he wanted to leave school. He was back at school the next year. There was the girl who wanted to be a nurse. Her results were not good enough even at a time when it was relatively easy to enter that profession. She came back to school too and, with some help from one of the teachers, she repeated the year and went on to train as a nurse. 

There were other students too, students who did "well enough" or "as well as expected". And there were one or two who exceeded expectations. I remember the look of bewilderment on the face of a friend whose family did not get a paper. She had come in to the small township not even remembering it was results day. The Senior Cat had seen her outside the general store (co-op) and congratulated her on passing everything. She had not expected to do that.  Her own parents had to be persuaded to let her return to school and she went on to run a business of her own in a neighbouring township.

But the boy who contacted me yesterday wrote, "I just wish I could tell Mum and Dad and your father ..."

I sent a congratulatory message back and said, "I think they know."

He can read that in large, black print on the screen.