Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.28 Irregular verbs and a forbidden cave

Our week of French lessons proved to be just as dreadful as some of us had expected, or arguably even worse than that.

Ms Mallet had announced that our homework for this week would be to learn to conjugate twenty French irregular verbs each day, a announcement that had been received with incredulous laughter on the side of her students.

As it turned out, our worries were more than justified.

On Monday, less than five minutes in first period had passed when Ms Mallet called Dorothy Barnett to the blackboard and asked her to translate and conjugate the verb 'faire'.

"Uh ... to do?" Dorothy tried.

"You are not supposed to ask me, Barnett," Ms Mallet chided her. "But yes, to do is a correct translation. Now, kindly conjugate the verb for us in the present tense."

"Um ... " There was a longish pause.

We all rather sympathized with Dorothy. It was a fair guess that few if anyone of us had made any efforts to actually learn how to conjugate Ms Mallet's first list of twenty irregular verbs.

"Well?" our teacher asked.

Dorothy was chewing her lower lip.

"Um ... Je fais. Tu fais."

Ms Mallet nodded.

Encouraged, the girl continued. "Il fais."

"Non."

Dorothy was starting to look panicked. "Not?"

The teacher shook her head. "Not."

"Il ... il fait," the girl tried.

Ms Mallet nodded. "Go on."

"Nous faitont."

Ms Mallet raised an eyebrow. "Faitont?" she asked. "Seriously?"

"Not?" Dorothy looked confused.

The teacher shook her head. "Non."

"Um ... nous faisont?"

"Better."

"Vous faises, il fons."

Ms Mallet frowned.

"Vous ... faisont?"

"This is not a guessing game, Barnett," the teacher declared. "You have not learned your irregular verbs at all, have you?"

"Um ..." Wisely, Dorothy did not attempt to actually answer that question.

"Mon Dieu." Our teacher heaved a dramatic sigh. "It is obvious that you are in need of some additional motivation."

"Additional motivation, Miss?"

"Indeed." Ms Mallet had taken one of those dreaded yellow slips of paper and was writing on it. "I want you to pay a visit to your tutor. That would be Atkins, no? She will discuss with you the importance of  doing your homework."

"But Miss ..."

Our teacher shook her head. "This is not open for discussion, Barnett." She handed the yellow note to the girl. "Now hurry up, you want to miss as little as possible of this lesson."

As Dorothy left the classroom,  Ms Mallet cast her eyes across the class. I experienced a powerful impulse to duck down and hide underneath my desk.

"How about you, Morgan? That's right, I am talking to you, dear. Kindly come here and demonstrate to us that you have mastered the conjugation of the verb 'mettre'."