My report cards were always a colourful tale of the frustration, optimism, annoyance and happiness I caused my teachers. They couldn't quite decide what or who I was so it was an array of, quite frankly, a whole lotta stuff.
If there was one thing I was consistent at in my young life, it was the guarantee of a wide spectrum of adjectives used to describe me, my academic performance and general social ineptitude. Words such as erratic were thrown around so much that my father once considered taking me to a child psychologist (Nigerian parents do not believe in therapy so this was a great concern for me...).
I'm not sure what exactly it was about me that screamed, "unable to concentrate", "not applying" myself, stubborn. but those words haunted me far less than "erratic." I remember the first time it was used. My parents, as usual, ignored all the praise and the good grades and zeroed in on it... There it was, a word used to define my entire being, my existence so bluntly reduced to one adjective- erratic. They looked up at me in amazement. At the time I didn't know what erratic meant, (for a split second I thought it was erotic, which seemed logical to me because i thought my media teacher was an old lesbian anyway...) But no, erratic; unsteady, irregular, unstable. My teacher thought I was unstable. Do you know what it means for a parent to read that the person whom they have entrusted with the care of their child, a thousand miles from home, thinks that that child is, essentially, insane? What a cow!
My parents did what any normal (I think?) parents would, they sat me down and asked me if I was crazy? To which I replied, "I'm not sure... Define crazy." Then we sat in silence. How do you qualify crazy? What is crazy and what is normal? I mean I thought I was fine. Sure I had my quirks about me, but don't we all?
I will be the first to admit that most classes were spent either writing rap lyrics in my "rap book", dreaming up scenarios that were probably unusual, or just generally not being present in mind (and whenever I could get away with it, in body as well). But what part of that was deemed erratic? I mean I suppose my fashion sense was questionable at best and maybe I could have been a little less creepy in my dealings with fellow students in and out of class but I don't think that makes me irregular. She never asked questions that I particularly wanted to answer (she never asked me anyway) so I wasn't irregular there. I think she was just being spiteful.
Someone else described me as erratic recently... And this time, armed with a working knowledge of what the word means, I was completely offended. "What? Why?" I protested. "You're just... weird..." Now what really annoys me about this situation is that I then analyse my life and realise that for a weirdo I'm pretty below average in my day to day dealings. Fair enough, I make for some very awkward encounters like the one with the penis bashing on the tube... But that was just an unfortunate event... I have been cast in many a series of unfortunate events to be honest but weird I am not. Predictably unpredictable or unpredictably predictable is the question I ask.
I asked my teacher when I was leaving school exactly what she meant by erratic. She said, "Sonia. You're an interesting little girl. You would sit there, with a smile on your face, completely zoned out. Other times you would be walking to the shops with your head down at the speed of a dodgy burglar who knows that the police are in sight. You could go hours without saying a word to anyone, you'd just sit where you are and daydream. You never were able to snap back into the groove of the class once you were gone. Even though you ended up performing very well, it was an unpredictable journey leading up to it because I never quite knew when you were with us and when you weren't..."
Well... I could have done with just one example...
I went to my photography teacher, Mr Hopkins, the best teacher I ever had. And I asked him if he felt the same... He said, "It's hard to say, with this class you worked very much independently of me. However, I wouldn't say you were erratic, no. Just a little... quirky."
To be perfectly honest, I can tell you that we were all a bit erratic. I hated school, I hated being cooked up in a class learning about the symbiotic relationships of things, or the meaning of opportunity cost or anyone trying to make me like Emma (the book). I had little interest in very many things and unfortunately I wasn't very good at feigning interest so I can see how that came across. However, I have no explanation for the way I walked or the reasons that I smiled whilst lost in my thoughts... I can see how that looks... you know... odd.
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