Mean Teacher II

My career in teaching officially began in a phone booth at Vert Bois dormitory at the Universite Paul Valery in Montpellier, France.

The hefty rent of fifty bucks a month got me a bidet and weekly maid service (which, since it entailed the maid invariably dragging out all the luggage stored under my bed and depositing it in my unmade bed in a declaration of cultural disparity, I usually opted out of) but it did not get me a phone. Bi-weekly chats with the ‘rents entailed careful timing, expensive phone cards, and this plexiglass cubicle outside the laundry room.

I had become a French major for the sole purpose of spending a year abroad in France. To appease the nice people paying my tuition, I had mumbled some bullshit about wanting to teach, but really, my ambitions ended at a small bar on Place Juan-Juares, where I could read novels all morning and drink café au lait, while sneaking admiring glances at Jerome, the hot French waiter.

The mistake I had made was taking an education class with Dr. Grace Mitchell the year before. Apparently I had somehow caught her attention and she actually called my parents and told them to make me enroll in the intensive certification program when I got home, so that I could graduate with a teaching certificate.

I heard about this for the first time in the plexiglass phone booth. Cigarette dangling from my lips, a whiskey-and-hash hangover pulling my eyes closed against the glare of the Midi sun, I listened in shock as the nice people who paid my tuition disabused me of my fantasy of staying a student for the rest of my natural born life. I would enroll in the certification program, I would graduate on time, I would get a job and move on with my life, because the gravy train was scheduled to stop in June of ’96 and cigarettes and whiskey did not pay for themselves.

It’s a good thing I had such a fantastic time in France. I dyed my hair weird colors, never went to class, went to cool indy movies (I saw Clerks and Shallow Grave ages before you did), rode shaggy horses on the beach, ate incredible food – even at McDonalds, had an enlightening love affair with a Jewish comedian and bought some really sweet boots in Barcelona. It was the last fun I was going to have for a long time.

posted by Holley Wilson Mayville @ 2:56 PM