First Rhymes With Worst

I thought that the worst part of my son’s first day was what happened when he left through the wrong door and couldn’t find me and freaked out thinking we had abandoned him, but I was wrong.

He had already been having a worst day.

When my wife and I dropped him off with his new friend, we assumed that everything would work according to the basic structure we had been planning well before we left Canada.

We were told that he would be in class with his new friend.

His new friend would be able to translate for him.

His new friend would introduce him to all the new structures and rules and challenges he would be facing, introduce him to other kids and, in general, be his hold card for worming his way into his new world.

He would become the coolest kid in the school and everybody would hold him up on their shoulders and parade through town.

None of those things happened. Not even the first part.

My son and his friend walked into the class and sat down, the teacher smiled and greeted everyone warmly, and then she stopped mid-warmth.

The way my son described it, the teacher actually got angry, and at first I didn’t believe him, but now, I am certain that he wasn’t exaggerating.

She pointed at him and barked off a thick wad of German.

He didn’t know what to say, and his new friend just shrugged, then leaned over and whispered.

“She says you don’t belong here. You have to leave.”

I don’t really know the specifics of exactly how it happened, or who said what, but my son described it like this:

The teacher got angry, checked her list, then walked out of the room.

She came back with the principal and pointed at him.

Then they asked him in German who he was.

His friend tried to answer, then stopped.

My son gave his name.

The principal told him in broken English that he wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t on the list.

He wasn’t supposed to be in this school.  

My son was taken out of the classroom and put in the office where he was told that his parents should have signed him up for this school because you can’t just walk in and sit in any class you want. Why didn’t they have any information about this?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that is the kind of question the Principal of an elementary school should be asking of an eight year old.

Do you remember being eight? I do, and I remember that eight year olds do things just because they are told to do them. They don’t tune in to the details and rationale, or find out all about the paperwork involved. They’re just kids and you might think that people who work in a school would know that.

So why didn’t they just call us?

We might have been in a better position to point out that we had indeed sent all the paperwork, all the report cards, gotten permission, made contact, set everything up. We could have talked to them as equals, maybe even without being terrified and confused and eight years old.

After a time, I suppose somebody figured out that maybe my son a) didn’t speak German and b) wouldn’t have been able to answer their questions even if he did, and so they sent him off to a different Grade 2 class and told he had to stay there.

He would not be in with his new friend.

At this point, he was very upset and I don’t blame him.

Now he was in a new class in a new school where he ad just been told at some length that he wasn’t supposed to be attending, he had no translator to help him, no new friend to make him feel welcome, no clue as to why they weren’t expecting him after we had already told him they were, and he was for some reason convinced that he had just been put back into a lower grade because, “they think I’m stupid because I can’t speak German.”

He told me that he sat in his new class all morning feeling stupid and scared and wishing he could run away, which is what he did the second he was dismissed, and that’s why I didn’t see him.

Once I teased this story out of him, my wife got home.

Now the stakes were raised.

Mommy doesn’t like to see her babies cry.

She rounded on me.

How could the principal have told him that he wasn’t supposed to be there?

I didn’t know.

We had sent everything in at her request months ago. His placement had already been arranged. Why didn’t she have all that information?

I didn’t know.

What was happening here? What was wrong with these people?

I didn’t know.

I told my wife that I would go over and talk to the principal immediately.

“No! You can’t go. I’ll do it. I’ll get him moved back into the right class and he’ll be fine.”

I knew why she wouldn’t let me go. It’s because I am a monster.

My wife has this theory that I don’t care about other human beings.

She thinks that I have all of my feelings tied up with the people I am already close to, and I don’t have anything left over for anybody else.

As a result of this missing gene for empathic human understanding, she figures that, instead of going into the school and entering into a mutually respectful dialogue with the principal about my son’s future, I will go in hard through the window with flashbang grenades and clear the office on full auto.

She’s wrong, of course. I don’t have any flashbang grenades.

She’s dead right about the feelings part, however.

I very much wanted to go over and talk to the Principal. I was eager to burn that bridge and dance naked in the ashes.  

We didn’t have to put our son in a German school. We chose to put him there. For his benefit. And if it wasn’t to his benefit, then we could pull him right back out. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings to go with our original plan and home school him for the year. He couldn’t find a better teacher than my wife no matter where else he went.

If he was going to be treated like an unwelcome Auslander on Day 1, then I was all in favour of not sending him back to take anymore of the same crap on Day 2. And I thought it would be nice to go over and share some of the special feelings I had around these issues with the Principal. Which I would have done, had I been allowed.

I was not allowed.

So, while my good woman went over to the school in full Grizzly Bear Mama mode, I worked on trying to make my son feel better about his miserable morning by playing World of Warcraft with him. There is nothing more therapeutic for a sad little boy than fighting computer generated pigs with a magical dagger.

When my wife came home I ran upstairs for the good news.

“Did you make her cry?”

My wife didn’t look very triumphant.

“No.”

“What happened?”   

“She won’t move him.”

“So let’s pull him out! The hell with these people!”

“I don’t want to pull him out. I want him to learn German. That’s why we’re here.”

I thought that we were here for fun and good times, but I didn’t say that. It wouldn’t help. Something I have learned in my life is not to argue with my wife. Not much, anyway. It is way smarter for a man to give in on any issue rather than argue with the woman he sleeps with.

“Okay, so what did the principal say?”

“She said she knows what’s best for our son.”

Now that’s confidence.

She had only just met our son a few hours earlier, had hardly spoken to him, and once she did, couldn’t understand anything he was saying, and already she knew what was best for him.

And there we have the German education system in a nutshell.

The Principal pointed out that there was a boy in my son’s new class who had lived in America and therefore spoke excellent English. He would be able to translate, and being as he lived nearby, would also be able to walk my son to school.

“It is much better this way,” she said.

But why?

Why would it be better to move him rather than just let him be in the class with the kid he already knows? Why not just let him go ahead and do what he was already expecting to do?

I can tell you why: because that would mean that she had been wrong.

It turns out that there are a few Germans living over here in Germany who simply are not wrong. About anything.

It is astonishing but it is true. And I know it is true because I have been told this by one of those very Germans. Actually, I was told a lot of things by one of those very Germans. Lucky for me, not only is that kind of German always right, but is also in possession of vast amounts of knowledge that everybody else needs to know.

I have made a small list of some of that valuable information.

Belgians are the worst drivers in the world.

German bread is the best in the world.

Turkish people don’t properly prepare their children for school.

German cakes are the best in the world, and Heinemann’s has the best cakes in Germany.

The Italians are the worst drivers in the world.

Everybody knows the Germans work the hardest. That doesn’t include the former East Germans. Those people don’t do anything.

Spanish people are the worst drivers in the world.

German people are the best at looking after their skin.

Nederlanders are the worst drivers in the world.

There was a lot more.

The ratio of Time Spent to Valuable Knowledge Gained was incredible. I could make the most amazing graph if only I hadn’t disabled that feature in this program. The willingness of these people to inform a clueless Canadian visitor about the best way to do everything was something that I will treasure for the rest of my life.

Once you understand this particular kind of German, you realize that it doesn’t matter how much logic you use and it doesn’t matter how right you are if it contradicts what they already know.

We would have to give in.

My son would go into the new class and we would shut up and let the Principal run her school the way she saw fit.

This didn’t sit well with my son. I kept reassuring him that he had already had the worst day of school here, and every other day would get better and better until he felt like he belonged.

“By Christmas,” I said, “you’ll be able to understand the language, you’ll have new friends, and it will feel normal to live here.”

He looked at me like he felt sorry for me, like I had no idea what was going on.

“No I won’t.”

When I dropped him off out at the playground on that second day, he was pale, and while I promised that we would play WoW again when he got back home, and told him about the greatlunch we would have ready, his eyes reddened and he shook his head.

“I can’t do it!”

“You have to. Just keep going for awhile, and if it really doesn’t work, we’ll pull you out. But for the next few weeks, you have to try.”

He blinked away his tears, wiped his face, then turned and walked into the playground.

His head was pointed at his feet and he hunched his shoulders against the weight of his schuleransen as he walked into a screaming mass of complete strangers.

It made me feel sick.

When I was his age, I wouldn’t have been able to walk into that school yard. I would have collapsed under the pressure.

The thing I kept telling myself was, at least he’ll be in with a boy who speaks English. He’ll make a new friend and everything will be fine.

And then we met him…