(did i mention this point.)

Today was just one of those days. Where everything goes to Hell In A Patent Leather Handbasket. It started out a-okay: three classes at École JF, a lovely long afternoon off due to a class field trip, and even a chance to decompress at one of my favorite cafés with strawberry sorbet winking at me from a large dish. Getting home to find that the power was out was a minor convenience, and I didn't think too much of it. I'd had my last lesson planned to a startling degree, had remembered to bring the little prize for the fierce and future Simon Says competition, and was very much looking forward to my CM1+2 class at the end of the day. I admit my motives may have been tainted, but how often can I honestly say that I want to go to school? Not often.

Then France intervened with her own intentions.
No tram service between Quinconces and St. Nicolas à cause d'une manifestation.
[This is a problem. I get to school by tram. It usually takes less than ten minutes, but I am usually leaving from my apartment, which is a five-minute walk from St. Nicolas. I am now a twenty-five minute walk from St. Nicolas. Ummm. Shit.]
So I walked with haste. And I got there. Later than I usually prefer - I'd missed recess - but I got there before my class started and had fifteen minutes to de-frazzle and even enjoy the strange peace of sitting in an unlit empty classroom. Those chairs are shockingly comfortable.

3.45 came and went and les enfants weren't running across the courtyard to my classroom in their usual fashion. Not a surprise. Their teacher reliably lets them out late. He claims he loses track of time, but I know better. At 3.50 I was just getting up from my chair to go get them, and I see Le Maître has sent a messenger, winging his way towards me. That was new. I opened the door and this little fellow, we’ll call him Billy, tells me that he’s been sent to me to inform me that my students are on the way and that they’re correcting “a very important paper.” Le Maître conveys his apologies. I thank Billy for his services, and tell him I’ll see him in a few minutes.

This is significant, and I might even consider it a triumph. Anya : 1 French Frost Bite : 137. It has literally taken me six months and several cringeworthy—nay, unbearably—humiliating interactions, but at long last I have earned enough space in my colleague’s brain to provoke such a courtesy from him. He not only has his emissary explain; he has him apologize on his behalf. Brilliant. I like it. This is good.

Two minutes later the my door is flung open and a smiling shy girl with pink highlights bids me “good afternoon.” I love when they say that shit. It makes me think they might even be listening to me from time to time. The rest barrel in with their customary zeal, taking turns locking each other out and making silly faces. Standard. One kid pipes up: “Joanna, Le Maître told us to tell you that you have to let us go five minutes early so he can pass out candy for his birthday.” I ask her to repeat. She does. Huh. Okay. Five minutes late, five minutes early. My forty-five minutes with them is now at very best thirty-five.

I tell them that Le Maître and I had a discussion last week and we’ve decided that it will now be me who gives them lines when they act up in my class. In English. With the French translation. This means: double the lines. They stare at me in horror. I tell them I’m serious today and ask them if they understand. They say yes. We go over body parts: hand, head, hair, eye, ear, mouth, toe, finger, knee, shoulder, leg, arm, foot, tail, claw, whisker, feather. We discuss the difference between big/small, tall/short, and then we go outside for ten minutes of Simon Says. I tell them there’s a prize, and elimination is immediate. They’re pumped. I should note that they’re also ten and eleven year-olds.

Simon Says is intense, and I’m surprised and delighted by how much they pick up on, considering my sparse examples. When the first kid is eliminated, he asks me if rather than spend the next minutes sitting, he can run a lap around the courtyard. I say sure. He starts running. When the next kid gets out, he does the same, until elimination means a jog around the playground. I’m down to three kids, and I give them a doozy: “Simon Says Point To Your Right Hand.” I repeat it. They all make mistakes. No one wins.

But I have this prize : a really good piece of chocolate, and I want to give it out. I tell them we have time for one more round and call everyone back to the circle. Somehow three kids are back in the classroom and are plainly not listening to a word I’m saying. I know this because the walls are glass, and I can see very clearly that in fact, one of them – Billy – is attempting to find the “prize” in my bag on the teacher’s desk. This is also a problem.

When I get everyone outside and relatively quiet, I have a minute left before I have to send them back to Le Maître’s birthday party. I am so fed up with the strain of keeping them contained that I tell them we don’t have time for another round, as they’ve entirely wasted it. I tell them to get their things and go. I also tell them that I am not happy. At all. And their behavior has been bad bad bad. They get their belongings and are all filing out solemnly under my guilt trip, saying tricksy nice things like “Goodbye Joanna. See you tomorrow” when Billy doubles back and asks me in his most polite voice if he should tell Le Maître that I wish him a happy birthday. Ha. (His birthday was on Tuesday and I have more than already wished him that.) I tell him no, that I’ve done so, but that he can tell Le Maître that he was rifling through my purse. Billy becomes immediately defensive, saying the other two boys were too. I tell him he can tell his teacher that too.

Someone has left their pencil bag and ruler in my room so I grab them and hurry over to Le Maître’s class, hoping I can assign a student to return them instead of doing so myself. None of the kids hear me calling them – magically – so I get to stand in the doorway holding a purple “truce” and ruler while Le Maître asks who’s left them. He tells me to come on in and join the birthday festivities. I do so shyly, thinking “This is also a good thing.” The kids (including his German students who are not his own kids) start singing him Happy Birthday when all of a sudden he interrupts them, and with a fury I have never seen unleashed, tells Billy that he will in no way hear of such a thing and how many times do they need to have these conversations… Yelling. Rage. Terror-inducing. Oh God. The kids look at each other in awkward, embarrassed, and yet slightly delighted silence. They look at me. Smiles break through, and Le Maître turns to the kid on his left and says “You distribute,” handing him candy to pass out. He walks over towards me and hands me some gum drops while I try my best to shrink into the wall. Some of the girls are pointedly staring at me and I wonder if I am the mysterious foreign girl they love to hate for garnering their very attractive teacher's attention, or the sorry sad bastard whom they've heard butchers their mother tongue on a day to day basis. The Westridge girl in me hopes for the former. Clearly. Ha.

I eventually disappear and walk back to my room, frustrated, angry, and pretty bummed. This is not how I wanted my afternoon to end: I had a plan. And it involved smiling and laughing and not… feeling so shitty. I see the kids starting their mass exodus from chez Maître and am not entirely surprised to see Teach, Billy, and Billy’s pal walking over towards me. Oh God. This is already uncomfortable. Le Maître asks Billy’s pal to explain what happened and the kid crumbles under the weight of our stares. I say nothing but watch them all, and feel, if possible, worse. His sentences stop making sense, his words get harder and harder to understand, his voice softens into a whisper. He denies any and all involvement. Wrong place, wrong time. Le Maître moves onto Billy and is exceptionally displeased to be having this conversation. After five minutes of unrelenting grilling, Billy admits to poking around my bag. I don’t know how he felt, but I sure as hell wanted to die in that moment.

Let me clarify: Billy and his copains are children. They’re ten-year-olds. They’re good kids, and I genuinely love them. I know they like me and respect that I don’t treat them like small-minded drooley midgets. And I remember what it’s like to be that age; that feeling of total disenfranchisement, that constant frustration with not being taken seriously by the adult world. Being curious and excited and for the most part pretty thrilled about anything new. Billy wasn’t digging around in hopes of finding something to steal; he’s no thief. And normally I’m not sure I would’ve made anything of the incident. But I had to. I knew if I didn’t, he’d think he could continue to treat me like a big sister, or a favorite, slightly bossy cousin. And I just can’t be shown that lack of respect. It’s unprofessional. But ratting him out like that was shitty. Really shitty. And the fact that I had to “rat him out,” that I had to involve Le Maître in all of this, was even shittier. Couldn’t things be clean? Uncomplicated? Direct?

Le Maître told Billy he’d spare him the lines but would write a note in his cahier so his mom could read about the incident. I left the school near tears. Then I got a text message from my roommate:

No electricity until tomorrow. Those groceries in the fridge that I bought yesterday, like the butter and eggs and milk, and cucumbers…

Our toilet, for reasons that continue to confound me, is electric. I’d like to note that.




What the fuck.