Reports

My schoolboy preference for sun and speedos over set works and studying was clearly illustrated by both a year-round tan and my school reports. Teachers called me lazy; I preferred laid back, but that cut no ice whatsoever at 4 Ridgelee Way, Avondale, Salisbury, Rhodesia, and every time a school report arrived, I made myself as scarce as post-sanctions 2-ply bog-roll. There were many holes in my academic prowess, but none wider than my achievements at maths. It’s not that I didn’t try at maths – I didn’t try at anything – but you can’t bullshit in arithmetic, so I had akwana back-up plan.

Look my boy. You just cannot simply rely on English to get you through school. How do you get 86% for English and 23% for maths? Dunno Ma, sorry hey, I just don’t get maths one bit.  Extra lessons decreed June. Extra maths lessons for you Steven, and that my boy is bloody that.

Once a week, off I went to a variety of slightly damp, elderly retired men and women who mostly lived in The Avenues, in very small sunless flats redolent of Colcom meats, over-cooked cabbage and naphthalene. The men, somewhat effeminate, sharpened their pencils with small pocketknives, always wore ties; the women, slightly masculine, wore stockings even in October and kept potted African Violets dotted about gloomy kitchen windowsills. They’d hopefully ask questions like “In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse side is equal to?” and I’d truthfully answer “Huh? They did a lot of explaining, I did a lot of shrugging, and our combined efforts made sweet fokol difference to my school reports.

Unfailingly, an alternating procession of disappointed grey flannel trouser and crimplene day dress made its way to June’s Toyota Crown, parked waiting in the shade of a jacaranda tree, to mutter about being unable to help the boy, the phrase ‘a seeming unwillingness to learn’ used more than once.

Long, silent drives home hey. Looooong fukken drives.

Considering the overwhelming success of this extra-curricular activity, imagine my dismay when I was told that I was off to Hebrew lessons.

Hebrew Ma! Are you mental? Who even speaks Hebrew these days man? That is not the point Steven, and this is not a debate. And do not use that word again. Hebrew ma? No Steven, mental. It is an ugly word. Ja ma, sorry ma but ma – you and dad don’t speak Hebrew, so why should I? Come off it man Ma. I’d rather go back to maths, strue’sbob.

My pleas fell on deaf ears, and it was Hebrew classes there by the Sephardi Synagogue, one sunny afternoon after the other wasted in a stuffy classroom instead of swimming or chasing glossy little brown house snakes around in the vlei. Not only did my Hebrew skills make me appear to be a mathematician of Einstein-like capability; the class was filled with serious little goody-goodies, mostly ex-Sharon School, who had decided that yet another A at O levels would be a good thing.

Hebrew also meant another report on my academic prowess: 14% Steven? How do you get 14% for a whole term’s work? How Steven? It’s the dots ma hey. I just don’t get the dots and the plus or minus signs under letters, and then is it a boy or a girl and are there one or two of them… it’s yugely complicated Ma. Worse than maths hey, onetime.

One day the Hebrew teacher discovered that I’d written “Forwards Rhodesia Backwards Hebrew” on the cover of my textbook. Arguments of patriotic fervour and a sudden new-found love for Uncle Ian held no water and they – a person of such little interest to me that their name and gender are details lost in the mists of time and the smoke of dagga – made the same journey out to June’s car with the same “unteachable” message. We didn’t talk much on the way home, and we never talked about Hebrew again either, me, June, or the Old Man.

Sometimes, even I knew when it was better to keep my big mouth shut.