Name One Specific Thing You got in Trouble For in School

by Donna Swagerty Shreve

My sister-in-law put up this prompt on Facebook. That was when this story bubbled up within me. 

Mr. Fife and I did not get along. He brought out the worst in me. He arrived as our French teacher at Lincoln High School in 1961. I had had one year of French from a reluctant Mrs. Marsha Pierce who agreed to teach only one year on a temporary basis until the administration could find a real French teacher. They found Mr. Fife. We called him Monsieur Fifi behind his back.

Schoolwork came easily to me. I usually chose to slide along unless a teacher really engaged me and then I would push to excel. For the first time in my school career, I was not doing well in a class, —  French, I was doing my homework and actually putting forth some effort. I could not distinguish between the various sounds in the French language. Mr. Fifi certainly did not inspire me and set me up with an upper class man who had horrible body odor and we had to meet in a small supply closet. I was hopeless and soon even she gave up trying to improve me. I plugged along with a passing grade of C. I could memorize vocabulary and read at a passable level. Unfortunately failure was new to me and I was not inspired to do much about it.  My pronunciation distinguished me as so subpar that when it was my time to read out loud, Mr. Fifi actually plugged his ears. I did not find him amusing.

Mr. Fifi dug his hole with me a bit deeper when he took class time to criticize the district budget overseen by my father. My father had turned down some item Mr. Fifi requested. My anger was slowly simmering up to a good boil. 

That year in French, Mr. Fifi thought we should put on a play in French. As we spoke our dialogue, there would be translation put up on a screen above us. I was not inspired to memorize a bunch of words I was guaranteed to mangle. I basically made up sounds as I went and pretended it was French. The audience was not the wiser except for Mr. Jonathan Pearce, a revered teacher, who, I found out later, spoke French. Whoops. Mr. Fifi was furious with me and somehow that made me pleased. I could be a brat at times when I felt wronged.

I had joined the French club because there were good kids in it and we did a few fun activities.  That year we planned a field trip to San Francisco. We took a bus into the big city and ate at a fancy French restaurant. After our meal we got to hang out at Fishermen’s Wharf. One of our group members got inspired to do a social experiment in the midst of the huge crowd of the usual tourists. She pointed to the sky and several of us acted as shills and looked up in wonder. Soon a bit of a crowd had gathered and were desperately trying to find what was so amazing that a bunch of high school kids would look up in awe. When a big enough crowd had gathered, we calmly scattered. I then got inspired to do another stunt. I started a Congo line that we weaved in and out of some stores and the crowd. Mr. Fifi had really had enough by now. We had embarrassed him and we would pay. I can’t remember when we received our official notice but he gave most of the group a week detention.  I got two weeks.  

On our bus trip home we entertained ourselves by mangling some of Mr. Fifi’s cherished French songs that he had taught us in class. Clair de le Lune ended with a vigorous “cha cha cha”.  Success! We had had so much fun and he was miserable. When it came time for our first detention, I so wanted to march in with the others following me in a Congo line but I did restrain myself because any more time with Mr. Fifi was just too high a price to pay.

709 words

2/14/2017

Back to Stories

Back to Swagerty/Boone Stories