Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
come to Germany was a beerfest in Milwaukee. I'm sure he wasn't even remotely qualified to teach the
language. He taught it to us from an open book, running a stubby finger over the lines and skipping anything
that got too tricky. I don't suppose he needed a lot in the way of advanced degrees to teach junior high
school woodwork, but it was clear that even there he was operating on the outer limits of his mental
capabilities. I learned more German from watching
Hogan's Heroes.
I hated Mr Dreck as much as I have ever hated anyone. For two long years he made my life hell. I used
to sit during his endless monotone lectures on hand tools, their use and care, genuinely trying to pay
attention, but after a few minutes I would find my gaze romping around - thirty-six adolescent girls, all
wearing little blue pleated skirts that didn't
quite
cover their pert little asses - and my imagination would
break free, like a dog off its lead, and scamper playfully among them, sniffing and panting around all those
long, tanned legs. After a minute or two I would turn back to the class with a dreamy leer tugging at my lips to
find that everyone was watching me. Mr Dreck had evidently just launched a question in my direction.
'Pardon, Mr Dreck?'
'I said what kind of blade is this, Mr Bryson?'
'That's a sharp blade, Mr Dreck.'
Mr Dreck would emit one of those exasperated sighs that stupid people reserve for those happy
occasions when they chance upon someone even more stupid than they, and say in a wearied voice, 'It's a
fourteen-inch Hungarian dual nasal borer, Mr Bryson.' Then he would make me stand for the rest of the hour
at the back of the room holding a piece of coarse sandpaper to the wall with my nose.
I had no gift for woodwork. Everyone else in the class was building things like cedar chests and ocean-
going boats and getting to play with dangerous and noisy power tools, but I had to sit at the Basics Table
with Tubby Tucker and a kid who was so stupid that I don't think we ever learned his name. We just called
him Drooler. The three of us weren't allowed anything more dangerous than sandpaper and Elmer's Glue,
so we would sit week after week making little nothings out of offcuts, except for Drooler who would just eat
the glue. Mr Dreck never missed a chance to humiliate me. 'And what is
this
?' he would say, seizing some
mangled block of wood on which I had been labouring for the last twenty-seven weeks and holding it aloft for
the class to titter at. 'I've been teaching shop for sixteen years, Mr Bryson, and I have to say that this is the
worst bevelled edge I've ever seen.' He held up a birdhouse of mine once and it just collapsed in his hands.
The class roared. Tubby Tucker laughed so hard that he almost choked. He laughed for twenty minutes,
even when I whispered to him across the table that if he didn't stop it I would bevel his testicles.
The waitress brought my beer and I became uncomfortably aware that I had spent the last ten minutes
adrift in a little universe of my own, very possibly chuckling quietly and murmuring to myself in the manner of
people who live in bus stations. I looked around and was relieved to see that no one appeared to have
noticed. The man at the next table was too busy boasting to his wife/mistress how he had sold 2,000 Jason
King video tapes, 170 Sinclair electric cars and the last 68,000 copies of the American edition of The
Lost
Continent
to the Romanians for loft insulation. His companion meanwhile was making love with her eyes to
a man dining alone across the room - or rather masturbating with her eyes, since the man was too busy
struggling with three-foot-long strands of tangled spaghetti to notice that he was being used as a sex aid.
I took a big draught of my beer, warmed by my reminiscences, and quietly jubilant at the thought that my
schooldays were for ever behind me, that never again for as long as I lived would I have to bevel an edge or
elucidate the principles of the Volstead Act in not less than 250 words or give even a mouse-sized shit
about which far-flung countries produce jute and what they do with it. It is a thought that never fails to cheer
me.
On the other hand, never again would I experience the uniquely satisfying sensation of driving a fist into
the pillow-like softness of Tubby Tucker's abdomen. I don't wish to suggest that I was a bully, but Tubby was
different. God put Tubby on earth for no other reason than to give other kids someone to beat up. Girls beat
him up. Kids four years younger than him beat him up. It sounds cruel - it was cruel - but the thing is he
deserved
it. He never learned to keep his mouth shut. He would say to the toughest kid in the school, 'God,
Buckley, where'd you get that hair-cut? I didn't know the Salvation Army offered a hair-styling service,' or
'Hey, Simpson, was that your mom I saw cleaning the toilets at the bus station? You ought to tell her those
cigarette butts would smoke better if she dried them out first.'
