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I’m going to begin this story with a small boast, if I may. When I was at school, I was very good at German. In fact in my fifth year at school I won the school prize. I enjoyed the subject very much, and got on well Mr. Woodcroft, my talented and dedicated teacher. Mr. Woodcroft was very pleased with my progress in the language, and at a parents’ night talked extremely enthusiastically about my talents to my mother and father. He urged them to encourage me to continue with my studies in German at university, stating that I had an exceptionally good feel for the language.
Naturally my parents were pleased at the report, and happily told me kind Mr. Woodcroft’s thoughts. It made for a pleasant evening at home, until my dad said, “I think I may have upset him a bit, though.”
My father has many praiseworthy qualities, but tact is not one of them, and I was almost too afraid to ask what he had done.
“What did you say?” I whimpered with some trepidation.
My father laughed and boldly stated, “Oh, it was nothing really. He just squirmed in his seat a bit!”
“But why,” I asked, “why did he squirm?”
“Och,” continued my dad, “it was just when he was going on about wanting you to study German at university.”
“Why? What did you say?”
“I just said that, you know, studying German was all very well, but ultimately where was it going to get you? And then I said, ‘I mean, I’d hate him to become a bloody teacher or something Godawful like that!’”
Fraser Middleton got the German prize that year.
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