Not Another Friday the 13th(!)
It’s true, I have a terrible record with “Friday the 13th’s” - they follow me around like the grim reaper goes after those poor souls in Final Destination.
No matter what I do, I cannot seem to shake it!
Here’s an excerpt from one of my biggest ever Friday 13th disasters…
“Jacqui, if you are late for your French lesson, I will give you double what he gives you,” came my HoH’s dulcet tones from the bowels of the sitting room.
“No, sir. I won’t be.”
“I’m warning you, Jacqui, if you’re late…”
“Chill out, sir. I’m not going to be late,” I said, entering
the sitting room for uniform inspection. Lovely.
“Have you done your homework?”
“Kind of.”
“What does ‘kind of’ mean?”
“What is this, Question Time? You’re making me later… sir.”
“I’ll deal with that later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, I’ll ask you again. Did you hand in your homework?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well at least that’s something. Now hurry up and get
yourself along to your lesson on time.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
“And I promise you, if you are late; you will get double.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Run along.”
I didn’t wait for Jem to delay me any further. I screeched into the office, looked at the clock on my computer and it read 09:55. YES! I’m not late. The Skype chat then piped up right on cue. A message from monsieur le professeur, which read:
5 minutes
Excellent, I have five minutes. I’m not late, my homework has been handed in and I still have five minutes to get my shit together. Right. Where are my pens and where is the paperwork I need for this lesson? I quickly located what I needed, gathered my things, as well as my thoughts, and replied to sir’s message.
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Suddenly, I realised I had no water. My lessons are 90 minutes long and there is lots of talking involved. Sometimes I even get to do some of it. No, but seriously, it’s a language learning session so I really do have to do a fair bit of talking. There is no way I’m making it without any water, especially as I’ll likely be getting a bit of a thrashing for turning in my homework late. I’ll need a quick sip of some water before we carry on. I looked at the clock, it read 09:58. You don’t have time, Jacqui, advocated one part of my tiny brain. Go on, Jacqui, you’ll make it, argued the other. I thought for a nano-second and then decided ‘fuck it’, I’m getting a spanking anyway, I might as well make sure I have at least the comfort of a glass of water for afterwards.
With that I legged it out of the office, and battled my way through the raised eyebrows in the sitting room. So high were they I could see them above his broadsheet, I kid you not! I grabbed a glass from the cupboard and a water jug from the fridge. Spilt some of the water down the outside of the glass, but got most of it inside. I then ditched the empty jug in the sink, closed the fridge with a back kick that my taekwondo instructor would have been proud of, and razzed it back into the office to look at the clock. It read:
10:01
Oh fuck, I’m late! I looked at the instant chat hoping that there would be no message, and that in fact it would be my teacher and not I who was late today. But no, obviously that didn’t happen. Instead, there was the usual
Tu es prête, Jacqui?
Shit. It would be in fucking French as well! The rule is, if monsieur le professeur writes or speaks to me in French I must respond in French. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a good rule. I’ve worked with language teachers in both French and German before and they operate in exactly the same way and I am not knocking it. But look at the difference in the length of responses required:
English: Yes, sir.
French: Oui, monsieur le professeur.
I mean, come on! Throw me a frickin’ bone here, will you? Will you please? No. Of course not. I made one bad decision and now everything must go as wrong as possible on this particular Friday the thirteenth, just for Jacqui. Okay. Options…
1. Write ‘Yes, sir’ and almost certainly get lines for failing to respond in frigging French. Which will be on top of whatever I am already due for the late homework and now for also being at least one minute late for class.
2. Write ‘Oui, monsieur le professeur,’ to avoid writing lines and be an additional minute late, thus incurring more physical discipline as I type it carefully.
Hobson’s choice! In the end I went with option two. I typed the darn thing out in French, read it back, found two spelling errors. Yes, two! I rewrote the two misspelt words and hit ‘send’. I then checked the official time that the message was sent, and it read:
10:02
Could this day get any worse? Well, we are about to find out! The Skype call sprang into life and I momentarily thought about waiting for two or three ring cycles to steady myself before answering. However, I decided that I really didn’t want to end up being three minutes late, as opposed to just two, so I bit the bullet and answered almost immediately.
I got a ‘Good Morning’ and we had a brief exchange of pleasantries before he got down to business. There was nothing half-arsed about the reprimand, let me tell you. Sir started up with the late homework and explained to me why that is problematic for a private tutor. In brief, he’d had to prepare a whole other lesson for this morning in case there was no homework at all for us to work through. I mean, it’s not like there is a class full of other students to lean on here for support. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and he really laid it on.
“It’s an attitude I haven’t seen from you before. A student really only has two basic duties. The first is to be attentive in lessons, work with me, and the second is to do your homework.”
I couldn’t argue with any of that, worse, I agreed with it. He then moved on to my lateness.
“I am sure you know what happens to students who are late for my classes? So, it will come as no surprise to you. If you are not there in time for the start, then you are late. So, I’m going to give you the cane. Six for the homework and, as the cane will already be out, and you were two minutes late: two for tardiness. Now, as it is Friday the thirteenth, I did wonder how I could make it up to thirteen strokes… but I couldn’t quite do it, even with my vast experience. As it is a first offence, and your effort has so far been exemplary with homework, you will get six, but it can go up to twelve for a second offence.”
I did plenty of head-hanging and threw in the odd ‘Yes, sir’, but basically, that is how it went, until I was sent off to fetch my HoH to carry out the thrashing.
Jem did not look at all happy when I entered the sitting room. I mumbled something about needing a caning for being late and for late homework. He got up from his easy chair, shot me an irritated look, and walked past me in the direction of the office. I followed on but was stopped in my tracks right outside the door, as he closed it in my face whilst barking:
“Wait outside.”
“Yes, sir,” I said to an already closed door. I slumped against the adjacent wall, as I knew I wouldn’t be able to listen in properly to this conversation. As, unfortunately, I had forgotten to unplug the headset, meaning I’d only be able to hear my HoH’s half of the conversation…
Yes, that really did happen and the dialogue is 100% accurate (I always take excellent notes!) What a Friday the 13th that was!
For those of you who’d like to read the whole story, here it is:
https://jacquijames.substack.com/p/friday-13th
Jacqui James
Live-Lash-Love
That was from the “SCHOOL” section of my website, more of which can be found here: https://jacquijames.substack.com/s/school
[ALL materials ©Jacqui James 2024]