MISADVENTURES OF AN ALIEN(ATED) LANGUAGE TEACHER

Part 1

PART 1

How did I end up with my wrists cuffed to my back in an interrogation room? Good question, that. I suppose that to find yourself in such a situation, you have to commit a series of mistakes, big ones. Of course, when you are there committing them, you don't know that they are mistakes. If you knew, you wouldn't commit them in the first place, would you? So let's revise, I know, it sounds like teacher's talk, but that is because of my teacher training background:

First, you talk about things you shouldn't talk. And then you get cocky and you talk too much and too assiduously of the same aforementioned things.

Second, you assume nobody is really listening to you when you speak, let alone understanding what you are about. (I know most teachers want to think that their explanations are fully understood by their students. If they want to live in fantasy, that's their call.)

Third, you have the stupid idea that your classroom is some kind of Sancta Sanctorum, and everything that is said there, stays there. I mean, what normal student would go around talking about the things you have said to his or her friends and family, or the secret police, for that matter?

Fourth, you think very poorly of yourself. That is, you think that you are so insignificant, that you will never call the attention of any higher powers. Who would be bothered by the words said by a nobody like me? Which leads me to:

Fifth, never underestimate the power of words. Yes, I should have that tattooed on my wrist, so that I read it every time I have a look at my watch.

And sixth... well, no, let's cut the list at five mistakes. They are serious enough to explain why I'm in this cumbersome present situation. So you see, I may want to kid myself into thinking that it was because of my bold actions that I am here, but in fact, it was because I was acting plain stupid.

So one sunny and agreeable day, while I'm delivering my lesson in a classroom where you cannot really see the sun and it is not at all an agreeable environment, two guys in black suits appear at the door and ask me to kindly step outside to have a word with them. I graciously complied. In retrospective, I should have bolted, throwing myself through the window, but you have to grow wings very quickly to survive such a feat when the classroom is on the third floor, and I was not in the mood for flying.

So, as I said, I went out of the classroom with a reassuring smile. I suppose that is because teachers have the idea that they must always look cool and collected. There is probably a rule in some teaching manual that goes something like: "never show that you are freaked out in front of your students", though I cannot recall in which manual I may have seen it.

The gentlemen seemed polite enough, but did not smile back at me.

"You will have to accompany us", one of them said.

It was the have to part that I didn't like. Invitations, I have no problem with, orders, that's another matter. And this was an order. You become very aware of subtle differences like this when you are a language teacher and pass your time drilling your students to death on the functions of language.

"Why?" I asked.

"You will know soon enough" he replied.

You know, as I am a language teacher, I fancy myself to be very good with words. So good, that I can talk myself out of any situation. So I said:

"Soon enough is now, so, if you don't tell me what this is about, I'm not going anywhere with you".

Oh, yes, that felt so smart.

So one of the guys showed me a gun hidden under his black coat and the other produced a pair of handcuffs and restrained my wrists to my back. And that's when all my language skills went to hell and I decided to walk with them in utter silence.

One of them went back into the classroom. You may want to think he wanted to explain my transitory absence to the students, but you would be deceived: he went back to retrieve my computer.

My computer... I started to think, think fast. I did a mental scan of the files. Was there anything in those files that could reveal...? No, I wasn't that stupid, or was I? No, definitely not.

They walked me kindly up to the elevator and pushed the button to call it. I suppose I should have been grateful they didn't drag me down three floors of stairs. Negotiating the steps with my hands cuffed at the back would have been tricky. No, I must correct that, it was four floors, not three, because they took me to the basement.

While we were silently descending into hell inside the elevator, I thought it funny to be being abducted by two men in black. When I say funny, I mean strange, not hilarious. You must understand that any good language teacher is fully aware of the multiple meanings of words and has a duty to clarify them thoroughly. Although... maybe it was hilarious too. Yes, it made me remember that scene of the movie Men in Black where Will Smith is in the car with this talking dog and... Sorry, I tend to digress when I'm in a stressful situation. I must have smiled remembering the film because the two guys looked at me strangely, or should I say in a funny way?

Anyway, we reached the basement and there was a black car waiting. I bit my lip with worry: this was too much black for things to end well. They helped me get into the back seat of the car, pushing my head down so that I wouldn't bump it in the frame of the door. How kind and thoughtful of them. Then, they strapped me with the seatbelt for security, not my security, I realized, but theirs. They didn't want me to try any funny business during the trip. (And there's that word funny again. I think I'm very fond of it.)

Now let me tell you about going for a car ride with your hands cuffed at your back: that is not funny, my friends. Can I call you friends? Yes? Thank you. Well, the cuffs keep sticking into your kidney area, no matter how you try to accommodate them. Being the positive thinker that I am, I tried to consider it a free lumbar massage. It didn't work, it was just painful discomfort. So I kept fidgeting and shifting the whole way. My captors must have noticed because they politely warned me:

"Be still or I'll knock you unconscious".

How could I refuse such good piece of advice? I kept as static as I could and let the cuffs push into my already sore kidneys.

After half an hour of this soft torture, (well, maybe soft is not the right word for metal cuffs bruising your lower back, but let it be) we arrived into the basement of another building. What is it with these people and basements? I was conducted up another elevator into a second floor. I idly wondered if a fall from a second floor would be as lethal as one from a third floor, but that was just useless speculation for there were no windows through which I could throw myself in the corridor I was walking with my ever present guy in black. He was dragging me by the arm, and I complied out of curiosity as to where he was taking me. Well, that and also mostly because I had no other choice in the matter.

After quite a long walk, he stopped, opened the door to a room and pushed me inside. He indicated a chair in front of a metal table and I obediently sat down. On the other side of the table, sat a puffy guy attentively looking at the screen of my computer.

"Ha!" I thought. "Try and make some sense of the contents of my computer, come on, I dare you".

My computer is organized as a highly sophisticated maze-like nightmarish haphazard group of files. Which is the same to say that it is a complete mess in which only I can find something specific in time before the sun consumes itself, explodes and becomes a red giant star.

The guy in black left the room and closed the door after him. The puffy guy didn't pay much attention to me, as baffled as he was with my computer, so I took a moment to ask myself: How did I end up with my wrists cuffed to my back in an interrogation room? And that's how all this story started, friends. You don't mind me calling you friends, do you? Of course, you don't. Thank you. Oh? Have I already asked you this? Sorry, my mind is not what it used to be before being captured by the secret police.