One of those days, when I was leaving a job interview in a restaurant to wait tables in the evening until one in the morning, I received what would become THE call. Resigned to my fate as a Charlie Chaplinesque waiter in Modern Times, I proceeded as any proletarian would have done in my situation: I wandered the streets of Paris, trying to reflect on my new predicament. I stopped at one of the many churches that exist, simply because this one was overflowing with beggars sitting on the steps drinking wine, so I sat there too, read a little -"Dancer Upstairs" by Nicolas Shakespeare I think-, and pondered on the transcendental nonsense you’re supposed to think about whence in God's house. That’s when the "Stuart International School" called me.
Now, I don't know who the genius is that named an English school for children from two to four years old "Stuart International School". In my frantic search, I overlooked the school's teaching level and sent them my résumé, seduced as I was by such an imposing name. Ironically, they not only interviewed me, but hired me.
What can I say: this is where I’m at. I wouldn’t call myself a "teacher", I am more of a babysitter, only with twelve toddlers of which the oldest is four years old.
Evidently, my life has taken a rather pathetic turn, nothing like Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop, but rather like Raising Arizona. I think about this as I wash the drool off my shirt every night, or as I try to steal the chocolate chip cookies from my students, because I don't get a paid lunch and I get hungry as hell after running around the room trying to grab petit Paul or François to convince them that "Blue" means blue.
The most farcical thing is the constellation of losers that make up the staff of the "International School": the assistants and cleaners are all Russians or from the former Soviet Union, who came to France to look for a better standard of living changing children's diapers. The owner is also French-Russian, which gives a scary Moscow-brothel feel to the whole thing, especially since they are basically in their fifties and spend all day bitter and smoking Gauloise cigarettes in the school hallway.
Among the teachers, David and John represent the escapees from the UK, who came to Paris to "live Bohemia," as David tells me, tired of so much tabloid press and so little English culture, and now, exhausted, with his pants covered in knee-high chocolate fingers stains, he confesses that he just wants to save enough to get out of this hellhole and go back to Birmingham, even if it's to work in a British coal mine.
Then there's Laura, a New Yorker who asks me the first day I meet her if I know of any way to watch "The Howard Stern show" or listen to it on the radio, her favorite program. When I look at her a little sideways, she quickly clarifies: "Not because of the flatulence and stuff. I like the other stuff, the interviews. "Sure, sure" -I tell her sympathetically, because I don't want anyone to dislike me. Although I didn't ask her where she worked at before, Laura seems to be coming from two years of employment as a cashier at one of Manhattan's Taco Bells. You know: forlorn, worn out look, perennial dark marks under her eyes, wrinkles everywhere and even a little hump on her back. Laura seems to be apologizing to life, as if she were about to check herself into one of Paris' detox clinics at any moment or jump off the Montparnasse Tower.
There are some French women there too, mostly because their children study there, so they can be with them all day. Oh, and there's me, the weird doctorate student who spends his free time reading books and trying to explain to two-year-olds that the earth is round. So, with a bit of resignation, I decided to form my Gandhi-like plot of peaceful resistance. The problem, like any problem of rebellion, was to isolate the enemy, since in this case it was useless to unload as the assistants did by shouting at Petit Pierre, who has nothing to do with the matter and who only wants to remain calm in his world of Pokémon. I can’t make life impossible for the boss or the other colleagues, that would only get me fired, and then I’d be forced to take the job as night ambulance driver or cashier at a lewd XXX Shop.
I plotted my revenge against life, against existence itself, against the system that produces contradictions such as a "preventive" war or zero percent fat chocolate, to go no further. In the end, since everyone fights with the weapons at his disposal, I went to my neighborhood library, where I got an excellent copy of Nabokov's "Lolita" with a drawing of a nine-year-old girl posing provocatively on the cover. On Monday, I got to the classroom bright and early, opened my book and began to laugh my backwards laugh, "eheheheeee".... while raising an eyebrow and licking my lips. What photographer Robert Doisneau wouldn't have given to capture the moment when Emily's father entered the classroom to see his daughter off and ran into that strange character who greeted him with trembling hands with a "Wellcome, Eeeeemily....eheheheheeeee"!
My plan hasn’t worked. For some reason, everyone is happy, the children have a good time, the director is fascinated now that she found out that I studied music, the parents even more so when I welcomed them with a children's choir singing "all we are saying/ is give peace a chance" while I get a kick out of thinking up other perverse routines to which I can expose the parents. Following that idea, I also got a copy of "Mein Kampf", with a red cover and a swastika stamped in the middle, and I'm going to take that book next week. The week after, I plan to teach the kids to say "Higher/ like a Lion/ in Zion" and the complete lyrics to Bob Marley's "War". I'll let you know if I haven't been fired by the time this article comes out. For now, as Alexandre and Estelle run around the room, sneeze, cover their mouth with their hand, pull their hand away, look at it, and then run off to wipe it on my pants, I can only say that more than a student working in Paris, more than an English teacher, I am a giant handkerchief full of snot. That is the only truth to which I refer.
Written circa 2003.