Verba

The bimonthly meeting was scheduled for three o’clock. The attendees included: my colleagues, depressed after a long day of work; two mothers, eager to represent fifty parents who couldn’t care less about being represented; and two precocious students⁠—Stefano D’Ovidio and Liliana Meneghini⁠—who were easily corrupted by the discovery that, as class representatives, they could say things they never could otherwise.

When I walked into the room, everyone was staring at a caricature that someone had drawn on the chalkboard: me as a bumbling giant with a hunchback and the neck of a giraffe, embracing a voluptuous student and planting a kiss on her cheek. Below the girl they’d written “Giusy Solofra, teacher’s pet.”

As soon as they saw me, the two mothers, the two students, and my colleagues all ceased their snickering. Then, in unison, everyone proceeded to feign horror⁠—“There’s no such thing as respect anymore, no such thing”⁠—as I hurriedly erased the board and sputtered, “No, no, it’s not like that at all. The kids love me. We talk freely, we have an antiauthoritarian, democratic relationship, like brothers and sisters⁠—isn’t that right, D’Ovidio?”

My colleague Calamaro, whom the principal had delegated to lead the meeting in his place, muttered, “You have no idea how much a babysitter is costing me.” She went on to appoint me secretary, which essentially meant taking minutes, writing down verbatim what was said.

I put up the usual fight. “Why is it always me?” 

“Because you’re Literature.”

“So?” 

“So if I had to file taxes I’d ask Zinale, since he’s Accounting.” 

I turned to Zinale and whispered, “It’s your turn, you freak.”

“No,” Zinale replied, happy to hold a business degree. 

“What are you, illiterate?”

“Yup,” Zinale said, more smug than ever.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the two mothers whispering to each other, probably saying, These teachers don’t even know how to string proper sentences together! They’re illiterate!

“Fine”⁠—I had made my decision⁠—“I’ll do it. But you’ll pay for this one day, Zinale.” Calamaro moved to start the meeting.

Depressed, I wrote: “November 5, 1990: the staff meeting commenced at 3:10 p.m.”

“Literature,” Calamaro began.

In schoolspeak, Literature means me, because that’s what I teach. I had to briefly report on how the class was doing. In long, flowing, well-constructed sentences, I said that I had no significant complaints about the students, except for a certain group of kids⁠—and here I stared meaningfully at D’Ovidio and Meneghini⁠—who occasionally interrupted my lessons. Then I wrote down what I had just said but in an even more elegant form.

Each of my colleagues went on to say pretty much the same thing about their own classes, but awkwardly, because they don’t teach literature. When I transcribed their comments I made them all sound a little worse, especially Zinale; I even had him make a couple of grammatical mistakes, which I put in quotation marks. None of them dared say, the way we do when we’re alone, that these kids really should be in reform schools. That’s what happens at these meetings: We say everything’s fine, things are moving along nicely; we don’t air our dirty laundry in public. At the very most we might mention, gingerly, how rude the students can be, but only if there’s documentation to prove that their parents or their former teachers⁠—not us⁠—are to blame.

“Parents, anything to add?” Calamaro snapped, as if to say: Make it quick.

The two ladies mustered the courage to speak. “Everything seems to be going fine … except for Italian.” (And by Italian, they meant me: I can be identified by way of any of the subjects I teach⁠—language, literature, or history.) “The kids don’t understand him when he lectures,” they said, adding that, nevertheless, the students found me engaging. What they meant was that although everyone enjoyed my lessons, they couldn’t really say what I was going on about.

“But⁠—” I protested.

“Are you getting all this⁠—verbatim?” Calamaro asked, silencing me.

I thought, Verba volant, scripta manent, the only Latin I still remembered, and transcribed their words with gusto: “The parent representatives emphasized that the literature lessons are particularly engaging, if at times somewhat complex.”

“Okay,” Calamaro said. “Meeting adjourned.”

“Already?” the two mothers exclaimed; they had volunteered under the impression that they’d be entertained well into the evening.

“What about us?” D’Ovidio and Meneghini cried.

“You’ve got something to say, too?” Calamaro asked, with a glare.