French Classes

Adapted from author's personal log, entry date circa summer 2003. Names have been changed for privacy.

French was compulsory in our school. They divided students into different levels of difficulty, based on a student's familiarity of the language. French "High" was for advanced speakers, where most of my latter-day friends were, French "Beginners" was for the novices and French Low for intermediates like me and a handful of other unwilling souls.

I hated French with a passion. The textbooks were extremely colourful with comics and pictures and characters, I suppose to attract students and make learning "fun." I didn't quite appreciate that. The colourfulness and "fun" aspect of it insulted my intelligence and served as a discouragement. I was mature enough to realise that comics aren't always for kids and pictures and fun stuff doesn't make a total drag like learning French any more interesting. I'm just lazy. But true enough, I wasn't interested in having fun while learning French. They're oil and water, they don't mix. I believed if they believed in teaching French, they should just teach French.

The books were so colorful and touchy and feely and “fun” that most of the real French to be learnt was from our copybooks, stuff the teacher made us write down. Now, I'm not one to be renowned for my consistency in attendance and attentiveness. Having to write things down in my copybook would often interrupt my thoughts, and so my French copybook was somewhat similar to the dental profile of an ice hockey player: full of gaps.

Our teacher was a particularly clucky woman by the name of Beded. She both loved and hated me, for I was that kind of student. First term was wonderful, she made everything so easy, I got good grades. Then came second term and she realized my true face when she turned up the heat just a little bit. I was lazy and uninspired, with absolutely no interest whatsoever in the subject. Let’s face it. Studying off a copybook analogous to a hockey player’s smile wasn’t going to get me anywhere.

Once, we were told to write an essay about nature and the seasons in our own country. Well, I’d been growing up on Bengali culture, where we’re so proud of six whole seasons (the specifics of which elude me till today), I couldn’t resist putting something like that into my essay! When she was handing our homework back, she held my submission back for a moment. In front of the whole class, she said, “I understand you want to add something interesting into your essays, but six seasons?” She glared at me for a moment and turning her gaze away, passed my essay to me.

Poor me, the whole class was snickering and laughing. How could I tell her, it’s true! Well, I’m sure she’d believed me in some way, but my absolute lack of sentence construction ability in French rather ruined the supporting sentences. My friend, Kamal, who used to sit in front of me then said, “Six seasons? What, the four seasons and two flood seasons?” Rrrright.

Of course, I wasn’t the only person she hated. There was the guy sitting next to me. Another totally uninterested and uninspired soul, Nithin. The boy was forced to transfer to my school, because his father who was rolling in cash at the time wanted to give his son the best education. Unfortunately, Nithin didn’t share the same ambitions as daddy dearest, and hated the school with a passion. What skills as a bully he had back in Indian School were being used on him at our school. Poor fellow was bullied into seclusion, and he could care as much about French as Saddam cared about the Kurds.

There was the time Nithin and I decided we’d challenge one another to lift each other’s chairs. I was huge at the time, a whopping centurion, a 100-kilo behemoth. Nithin, a skinny Indian, a bare 60 kilos was no match for me, so I’d regularly ruin his day by lifting the side of his chair closest to me, especially when he’d be writing something important in French class, like when he’d be writing letters to his cousin in India (yes, that’s the closest to ‘important work’ Nithin would get in French class).

One fine day, I decided to lift his chair while my teacher was writing something on the board. With all my strength, I heaved on his chair real subtle-like under the table, out of view, when my teacher unexpectedly turned around to check her book. Unknowingly, in my enthusiasm to ruin Nithin’s day, I invested so much energy into the task that a look of extreme exertion was painted across my face. My teacher couldn’t help but notice the quick transition between excruciating effort and casual attention on my face in her peripheral vision.

I spent the rest of the term sitting alone, in the corner.