In the Real World

by Nōnen Títi

  “That sounds a bit like an attack, Mariette.”

  “Maybe, but it’s true, isn’t it? They use projection and clichés; just listen to Mum.”

  We add a short explanation about the rights of students to have a say in the school council and refer to the prospectus, quoting the relevant sections. We finish by mentioning our website and invite the parents to respond. Grandpa Will could never argue that this isn’t a mature letter.

  Next Mariette calls Kathleen and reads the whole thing out to her. When she hangs up she’s arranged to meet Kathleen and Fred at Pat’s house on Sunday morning to address the letters, since Pat’s mother has an address list of all the students.

  A little later that evening Rowan calls me. “Do you think Grandpa Will keeps the barn locked this time?” he asks.

  “Of course he does, don’t get stupid ideas. How are you?”

  “I’m great. I wanted to stay here till Christmas, since we’re having a play I’m in.”

  “You can stay until Christmas so stop worrying. Grandpa Will knows what he’s doing.”

  I hope so anyway. They’ll be more alert this time. I’d like to visit the farm now. I suddenly get this feeling of urgency, as if I have to talk to him now or it’ll be too late. It isn’t a premonition, just an unsettled feeling that might have started with Grandpa Will’s call earlier, but it increased tenfold with Rowan’s remark. It keeps me awake all night.

  We meet Fred at Bellevue the next day to prepare the letters. It’s costing us a fortune in paper, envelopes and a new print cartridge, but it’ll be worth it if we get the support.

  “So how long did you work on that letter last night? I get the impression neither of you got any sleep,” Fred says after we made four attempts to get the font right.

  “I was up until four doing research on that revolution report and I’m still confused,” Mariette answers.

  “Same here. There’s just too much information to choose from. I’m still all in favour of homeschooling, but I think it might be too hard for most people. Going to school avoids the part where you have to think for yourself,” Fred jokes.

  I don’t know if Mariette gets any sleep this time, but for the second night in a row, I don’t. I try to concentrate on my report, but I have that done in two hours and I don’t get tired until it’s almost light.

  After Mariette leaves to go to Pat’s house, Miranda bursts into my room. “You never talk to me anymore. When you and her were fighting you always talked to me!” she scolds me. This is the second accusation of neglect in one week and it puts an end to the idea of sleeping through the morning instead. I try to make it up to her by playing games until it’s time to call the farm.

  The phone call is more awkward than the one with Grandpa Will on Friday. Dad has no idea what to say. I try to make it easier for him but then he bursts into tears. Then Grandpa Will comes back. “Not to worry. We’ll try again next week,” he says.

  “Just tell him I love him no matter what,” I answer.

  After that I need to get out for a bit, so I ignore my worries about visiting yet another new place and walk to Mr Shriver’s. He’s home alone, as he said he would be. “My wife is visiting our daughter and grandson, but the others will come soon.”

  I help him make a big pot of tea. The group turns out to consist of seven others; there’s an eight-year-old neighbour, a fourteen-year-old girl, a local teenager of around my age, one uni student and three adults of various ages, the oldest maybe closer to Grandpa Will’s age than Mr Shriver. Only the fourteen-year old writes poetry. The others write different genres of fiction.

  Mr Shriver starts the session by reading a short story of his own, which ironically, though maybe not surprisingly, is set in a school where the students run the show. It’s a comical story and I enjoy listening to it. He winks at me when the others applaud. There are a few comments about style and meaning and then the next person reads and also gets applauded. One by one they all read from their work. One woman has a long story, which she seems to read one chapter of per session, but most are complete works and I’m beginning to think they should all be professionals.

  I hadn’t counted on being asked to read myself this time and try to refuse, but they assure me that they all had the same worries the first time they joined. “It’s best to jump in and do it today or you’ll worry again next time,” the woman next to me says. She’s very convincing so I let her talk me into it.

  I didn’t bring my diary and the only poem I have with me is the one I wrote during the last two sleepless nights, which is about a butterfly giving up its only day of life because its wings were damaged in the web of a selfish spider. I warn them that it’s still a work-in-progress and start reading. Maybe it’s because I’m tired, but the words suddenly hit me wrong and I have to stop before I’m finished. I hate doing this. Then I have to wave away their compliments, which are supposed to convince me to come back next week, which I promise to do. It’s five o’clock before we’re ready to go home. Mr Shriver offers to give me a lift since there are no buses on Sunday.

  “I don’t mind walking.”

  “I know, but it will be dark soon.” He’s in no hurry and waits for the others to leave. “Did this have to do with your father being ill?”

  The question is too direct for me to come up with an answer, so I apologize for reading it. “I should have picked another one.”

  “No, you picked the right one. Poetry is a wonderful way to express your feelings and this group is the best place to do it. Believe me, you’re not the first person to get emotional. It comes with writing. I’d have liked to ask you about your father at school, but that isn’t really the place for sharing personal matters.” He tells me he’d already understood that Dad’s illness wasn’t physical and that it had something to do with my return after the break.

  So I tell him what happened, including Mariette’s part, and I tell him about the phone call today. “My granddad says it’s better I stay here until Christmas, but now I know he’s home, I can’t sleep. I’m afraid he’ll do it again, before I have a chance to talk to him. My grandparents are the only people there at the moment and they’re old …older. They might not be able to. you know? I tried to concentrate on school just so I don’t have to think, but I really just want to be there.”

  “Did you tell your grandfather about this fear, or your uncle?”

  “They’d say not to worry about it, and… but I do anyway.”

  “Now why would you think that you’re responsible for your father’s attempt? Because that’s what the poem implies, if I understood it right. Did I?”

  I’m caught between wanting to tell him and the notion that he’s a teacher and not family and you don’t tell strangers these things.

  “What do you think you could do if you went to stay with them?” he asks.

  “Nothing. That’s what Grandpa Will says. He says he needs time to give my dad some structure and I’d only start feeling sorry for him and ruin it all, but… I think I already did that…”

  The haunting words I’ve so hard tried to contain suddenly fall out, and with that six months of held back guilt mixed with tears.

  “Okay, look, sit down; you can’t go home like this.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Nonsense.” He sits down next to me and hands me a box of tissues. “Sometimes even poetry isn’t enough; sometimes the words just need to be said after all. It doesn’t matter if you’re sixteen or sixty; sometimes it’s okay to cry. And it’s okay to talk about it, because we’re not at school. So tell me, why would your father give up his life for you? What did you do that ruined it all?”

  There is no accusation in his voice, so I end up telling him, aware far in the back of my mind that this still isn’t appropriate, but I carry on anyway. I tell him more than I’ve told anybody else. “I should have realized why Nikos was there, but I couldn’t see it and then I said all the wrong things and… and now he’s gone, but Dad can’t live a
lone.”

  He moves to hug me. It startles me, but the need for this bit of human contact is stronger, so I stop fighting it. I try to say sorry several times, but now more because it seems the right thing to say.

  “Jerome, maybe you should try talking to your uncle. By taking you in he has agreed to temporarily take the place of your father. He’d probably appreciate being needed, but if you can’t you might want to come a bit early every Sunday so you can talk to me,” Mr Shriver says and then insists on taking me home. I’d like to use a thousand words to thank him, but I say none. He drops me off in front of Uncle Gerard’s house. I don’t tell them where I’ve been.

  On Monday morning Mr Moralis is back and starts the week with yet another assembly, in which he more or less openly says that he never agreed to a role play for civics and that this request to participate in what we aren’t capable of comprehending is ludicrous, and Miss Coven should have known better than to let us do it. I don’t think it’s right for the principal to scold a member of his staff in front of us even if it was true. Mariette looks aggravated. All I can pick up from this distance is that she said something and Mr Fokker told her off for it, so that she now turns her back to him.

  I feel a bit strange going into English but neither of us talk about yesterday. At lunch our core group comes together and we take turns reporting our research.

  Mine was easy. I chose the American Declaration of Independence from 1776; a successful uprising, though the peace treaty wasn’t signed until 1783 and an awful lot of people died in the meantime. “They had a few advantages, though; they were defending their home and they had an army.”

  Kathleen’s is Ghandi’s pacifist stand against the army in India’s struggle for independence in 1922. “No army, but very powerful,” she says.

  Josh reports on Julius Caesar’s defeat of the republic to make Rome a monarchy. “That went along with years of war too, of course.”

  Charlotte describes the people’s revolt in Athens in 508 BCE, which put the governing of a state into the hands of the people for the first time ever.

  Paul excuses himself saying that he had a tournament and didn’t have time, for which Mariette bites his head off. “I’m sorry. I’ll do it tonight if you want,” he says.

  “No, I don’t want; only if you want. If you find sport more important, that’s fine with me, just don’t make any promises.”

  Mick recounts of the fall of Eastern European Communism, which started with the Solidarnosc movement in Gdansk in 1980.

  Fred reports on the French Revolution that resulted in the first Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, which, in contrast to Caesar’s, turned a monarchy into a republic. “Though it didn’t solve all the problems, it did change the western world, but not without bloodshed. Even Robespierre himself was guillotined in the end.”

  Pat kept to more recent times and talks about the failed coup in Venezuela in 2002. “The attempt to overthrow a true democracy was backed by the big western industries, but the people reversed the coup within ten days. The brave, unarmed, poor folk from the villages flooded the streets and protected their president,” Pat says.

  Mariette’s is also a success story, that of the prophet Mohammed as he battled the local tribes for the right to his beliefs and the city of Mecca, which set off the spread of Islam.

  “Wow, we’ve learned more this lunchtime than in four years of school,” Kathleen concludes.

  “We’ve neglected Africa again, though,” I observe.

  “Let’s stick them on our website for everyone to see and we’ll ask for contributions, especially about Africa. It’ll show those parents who responded with anger that we’re not stupid,” Fred suggests, and adds that he wishes his own parents would read it. “But they can’t work more than the TV buttons to watch soap operas and reality shows.”

  Mick and Fred and I spent two hours after school responding, in a mature way, to the responses we did get, though like Mariette, Mick needs to be cautioned not to let his emotions take over.

  Not only do parents respond, but by Wednesday we have reports of two more schools where students are rebelling. One of them is a private school but Hillview is public, like ours, and they want to join forces. We also get support from a few parents who sign our petition. One of them is Kathleen’s dad, who openly says that he’d welcome students in the school council. A few teachers say they understand, but none will go as far as putting down their name. Most say they can’t agree with the uniform part. We debate about whether to separate the issues but decide not to. “Our demands aren’t excessive and if they start thinking just a little they’d soon realize that by allowing people to wear their own clothes they’d save an hour a day each telling everybody off,” Fred says.

  “Thing is, they want to moan about it. It hasn’t got anything to do with the clothes. Teachers don’t want individual students; they want numbers, all dressed the same. They want a herd of sheep, obedient and voiceless. It’s about giving up their power,” Mariette says.

  Kathleen comes up with a new slogan: Students in Free Dress or Teachers in Uniform; we all belong to the same community. She makes a big banner which we all help her hang on the gym roof on Friday, just before the assembly.

  Just one more week until term break and I get to visit Dad on the farm.

  MARIETTE

  I’ve done more homework in the last weeks than in all my school years put together. The irony of it is that I’ve done history for our cause and I’m doing English for Mr Fokker. I delivered him an According to the Dictionary chapter every Friday since week seven.

  This time my ‘write-away’ (after all, it’s hardly an essay) starts with the question of whether there’s a need for a principal in a school. This is in response to what he did in that assembly on Monday. I underline the definitions quoted straight from the dictionary and pepper them with my own comments like last time. This one reads as follows:

  principal (adj.)

  the most important, most influential, most consequential – exactly, a school could easily do without students or teachers, but what is its use without its principal attendant?

  principal (noun)

  the person with controlling authority or in a leading position as the chief executive officer of an educational institution

  An executive officer, according to the dictionary, is the officer second in command of a military organization – I shall refrain from discussing the true meaning of schools in this context.

  It gets better:

  a principal

  can be the chief or active participant in a crime – maybe backstabbing is a crime after all

  a principle (noun)

  a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine or assumption; a rule or code of conduct

  in principle

  with respect to fundamentals

  a virtue

  conformity to a standard – morality?; a particular beneficial or commendable quality or trait – I wonder who does the commending

  virtual

  being such in essence or effect, though not formally recognized or admitted

  vice (noun)

  a moral depravity or corruption, fault or failing

  vice- (as prefix)

  one that takes the place of

  So a vice-principal is to take the place of the principal in his absence. And as the latter seems absent from all but the most glamorous functions, it has occurred to me that the vice-principal is the virtual principal at Flatland High, while the principal is in principle only a vice.

  Concerning the idea of an institution for learning, now listen to this:

  Teach, instruct, educate, train, discipline and school all mean to cause to acquire knowledge or skill – This is aside from my belief that people are born with natural gifts and can only perfect them.

  teach

  applies to any manner of imparting information or skill, so that others may learn – which, with the help of our website, makes us teachers now too.

  in
struct

  suggests methodical or formal teaching

  educate

  implies attempting (mind this word)to bring out latent capabilities (PE is certainly not one of mine)

  train

  stresses instruction and drill with a specific end in view

  discipline

  implies subordinating to a master for the sake of controlling

  school

  implies training (remember the drill) or disciplining (remember the subordination for control),especially in what is hard to master or to bear

  I rest my case – courtesy of the Merriam-Webster Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 1989.

  I’m quite happy to bring this final chapter to Mr Fokker when I report to his room in order to go to the assembly.

  “Do you know what the Two Twisted Tees are, Mariette? T as in the letter?”

  I have no idea what he’s on about.

  “The two tees each refer to a word from history. One is ‘Tutankhamen’ and the other is ‘T-Rex’. Any idea what they have in common?”

  “They’re both dead?” I try.

  “I’d think the word ‘history’ implies that. Their common ground is to be found in the ‘twisted’.”

  I search my mind for any connection that could possibly exist between an ancient Egyptian king and a huge dinosaur, but can’t come up with anything.

  “It’s about the twisting of facts; not in the sense of telling untruths, but merely as a matter of emphasis. T-Rex can easily be called the most famous of all dinosaurs, yet he was a relative newcomer at the time of their extinction. He’d only been around two million years; even hominids have lived longer than that already. So why do we think he’s so important in history if other dinosaurs fared much better?”

  “I guess he speaks to people’s imaginations.”