Innocence is no more

I was 12 if I remember well. I was still living in Paris and was attending College Massillon. It happened when I was in a French class. We were having an exam. All questions were asked on a book we had to read.
I had enjoyed the book. I usually enjoy reading. This particular book was just pleasant enough for me to feel like reading it till the end. Amazingly, I still remember that book very well because of that exam I had.
During the exam, one question was about circumstances in which a student was attacked in the college where the novel took place. I remembered well the passage. I still remembered who the aggressor was and how the incident took place.

During those days, I wasn’t really allowed to watch TV late at night and my parents always avoided watching TV before we would all sleep. The only programs that I could still watch before going to bed were the News. During those days, you often heard on TV that young women got attacked in the metro or on a Saturday after a night club. I was familiar with that scene. It happened in school as well. When two kids used to have a fight, it would usually end up in one attacking the other. In other words, the idea of one hurting someone else be it a man hurting a women, didn’t shock me that much. I knew it was wrong, but I knew it could happen.

Although I was familiar with the vocabulary used in the media when it came to cases where people were attacked, words such as “assault”, “aggression”, “violence”, “victim” or “aggressor” , there was one word that started coming over and over on TV and I didn’t know what it actually meant.

Since I didn’t know what that word meant and since it was often if not always used in circumstances that implied an aggression, I thought it was a synonym of the latter. I thought it was just a more formal way, a more “intelligent” way of saying the same thing. After all, it often happened that adults used words that sounded intelligent to me at that time.

So I naively admitted that both words meant the same thing. I felt good. I thought I was getting smarter, that I was now understanding more words used by older people. Maybe it’s the reason why I used that word to answer the question number 20 while when it was asked how a student got attacked in the highschool in the middle of the book.

When I had finished the exam, I remember having checked the spelling of that new word again. I had written it down in a perfect way. I took some time to make sure it was written correctly and in a very readable manner. I surely didn’t want the teacher to read it for another word. My teacher should know that although I came from a family where we didn’t speak French at home, I too could have had the command native french speaking students had over that language. I felt good about it. I was already waiting for the day I’d get my copy back and would appreciate lofty comments made on it.

The day came but somehow the glory didn’t. Or at least, not in the way I had pictured it. I got my copy. I had a good mark. I was satisfied with my grades. But there was no comment made on that word used. Instead, the word was underlined with a red pen. Not knowing why the teacher didn’t appreciate what I thought was the sign of a rich vocabulary, I raised my hand and asked to speak. Every one stopped talking and I finally asked my question.

“ Excuse me, but I didn’t get the correct answer for the 20th question mam. You just said that the correct answer was that the student in question was attacked in the school building by an unknown student”
The class seemed to approve. So was the teacher. I carried on with my explanation, confident about my answer.

“ If that is the case, why didn’t I get the full points on that Madame. I wrote exactly that.”

Amused, the teacher made me to read the sentenced allowed.

“ The student in the book was raped in the building by a student who we don’t know”. This was my answer.

As soon as I had finished the sentence, everyone started laughing. I couldn’t understand it. It was the correct answer. She was attacked/raped, it was the same thing wasn’t it ?

I felt very bad that day. When everyone started laughing at me, I became all red and I felt my blood was getting up to my cheeks. I didn’t say anything and pretended I understood my mistake. But I was only pretending. Why would one mock me over using rape instead of aggressed if both were synonym ? didn’t people know that French language had more than one word to say the same thing sometimes ?
I waited for the class to end and I took the bus back home. I was still thinking about that incident. Everyone had laughed at me. Me, one of the only son of immigrant made everyone laugh. It was a shame. I should have been an example and make my parents to be proud of me. I felt very bad and kept thinking about the incident till the bus dropped me home.

When I came home, my mother served me a glass of milk and things to eat which I didn’t touch. I left them on the table and went in the room I shared with my sister and my brother. I took a heavy book out, a dictionary. I started looking for the word aggression. I read the definition again and again. I was right. An aggression was a way of saying two people were physically fighting. Then I looked for the definition of what a rape was. It was the last thing I read before I saw some of my innocence leaving me for ever.

Advertisement