Paris
I can’t figure this woman out for the life of me. Today she came to class apologizing for not having graded our homework. In hopes that we might forgive her, she brought in a chocolate cake and a roll of paper towels. “Come, don’t be shy. Eat!”
She was kind and funny for close to twenty minutes, and then she started losing her patience. Today’s lesson involved the future tense. We were given an in-class assignment, and as we wrote, the teacher moved from desk to desk and screamed at us. When she got to me, she looked at my paper, bent down, and attacked it with her eraser, digging away at my mistakes and saying, in her best English, “I hate you.” Later I mispronounced a word and she said it again. Mine was the last answer of the day, so I was left being the dunce. It’s a horrible feeling. I’m the one who allows everyone else to leave the room thinking, Well, at least I’m not him.
September 11, 1998
Paris
In class the teacher picked on the former flight attendant from Hong Kong, then on Yasser and the pretty young Yugoslavian woman. Toward the middle of the class, she asked us to turn to our homework assignments, and when I pulled my typed sheet from its folder, she snatched it away and held it above her head, shouting, “When I tell you to do a book assignment, you’re supposed to do it in your notebook. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
I pointed out that I had also done it in my notebook. It was all there, written in pencil. I’d only typed it up thinking we might be expected to hand it in.
This is where she should have apologized. Instead she just said, “Oh.”
Later we broke into groups to practice the future tense. I was with Anna from Poland, who works as a nanny for a family with three rotten kids, and the former flight attendant, who started class last month and has no idea what the teacher is saying.
September 13, 1998
La Bagotière
I spent all weekend working on my homework. The teacher wants an essay about the future, something along the lines of “One day I will be rich and successful.” But that’s for kids. Instead, I wrote, “One day I will be very old and reside in a nursing home. Toothless, bald, and wrinkled, I will wake myself three times a night, and with the help of my nurses, I will go to the toilet. I will eat nothing but gruel and once a month will bathe myself in tepid, cloudy water. I will regard my long, yellow toenails. I will have no visitors because all of my friends will be in their coffins. When I am old I will lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling. From the next room I will hear my ancient French teacher throwing chalk against the wall. I will say, ‘Stop. That’s enough!’ And she will criticize my pronunciation.”
September 14, 1998
Paris
The teacher threw a lot of chalk today, but none of it at me. We have a new student, a German au pair, and I wonder what she must think, watching people get yelled at and hit with things. Our last homework assignment was handed back, and though I’d technically made no mistakes, she still found fault with it. I’d written, for example, “You will complain all the time, day and night.” Her comment read, in angry red pen, “Pick one or the other. You don’t need both.”
September 15, 1998
Paris
The teacher was a kitten today. She picked on no one and for a brief while we all loosened up. Our homework for Thursday is to finish reading a comic strip and identify the vulgar language.
September 17, 1998
Paris
We had two new students today, an Indonesian who loves to travel and a fifty-year-old American named Janet who, when asked her profession, said, “Je suis a hairdresser.” She answered most of today’s questions in English and while the teacher let her get away with it, tomorrow I imagine she’ll be hit with both barrels. Today we moved into the tense you use when ordering someone around.
September 18, 1998
Paris
We had a substitute today, a casually dressed woman who did not give her name. She asked what we’d been assigned for our homework, and just as we were telling her, the teacher walked in and apologized for being late. She said something to the substitute like “You can go now,” but the woman had no intention of leaving, so the two of them went at it.
“You were late,” the substitute said. “The rule is that after fifteen minutes, someone else takes the class.”
Our teacher said she had the lesson all planned, and the substitute interrupted her and said, “Time is time.”
They went back and forth until eventually our teacher surrendered and stormed out of the room, telling us to have a nice weekend. It was fun watching her fight with someone who could defend herself.
Our lesson had to do with the imperative, the tense you use when making demands. To illustrate it, the substitute made me her slave and insisted that I kiss everyone in the room except her.
Later we were told to come up with a list of commands for students learning French—you must do your homework, you must not daydream, etc. I raised my hand. “You must dodge the morsels of chalk thrown by the teacher.”
The substitute seemed confused. “But no, the teacher does not throw chalk.”
“Ours does,” said the Korean guy next to me.
“When?” the substitute asked.
“All the time,” I said.
The Thai woman in the front row turned around then and hissed at me. After class I was approached by her and Polish Anna, both of them furious and convinced that now our teacher is going to get fired.
I tried to say that if I got the teacher fired, I could just as easily have the substitute fired for making me kiss everyone, but it came out a mess.
Anna said she’s had her share of nice teachers but never learns with them. The strict ones are the best, she said, and the Thai woman agreed.
I felt like a total shit then and even worse after talking to the Italian, who said that I was clearly the teacher’s favorite. I asked what gave her that idea and she said, “Because she told you that she hated you.”
September 21, 1998
Paris
The teacher returned, and the Poles and Koreans breathed an audible sigh of relief. I was happy as well until she gave us three homework assignments, these on top of the two she had given us earlier. I’ve spent hours on them already and still have to write an essay on an American holiday. It’s a lot of work, as I’ll have to double-check all my spelling in the dictionary.
September 25, 1998
Paris
The teacher was a real wildcat today. We got a new student on Tuesday, an Israeli. He talks a lot in class and she laid into him for it. “This is not your own private session. Why don’t you think before you open your mouth?”
Still he continued on, not the least bit intimidated.
The teacher threw a lot of chalk and said to me at one point, “Teaching you is like having a cesarean section every day of the week.”