There was something that I wanted to do. I wanted to deliver a letter to this lecturer of mine that I had that semester. I wanted to tell them exactly what I thought of them. I had written the letter about a week before, when I was first thinking about writing my essay, and I hadn’t delivered it yet. It had just been in my bag that whole time. The reason I wanted to write a letter was because I wanted to complain about the Barbarians: Antiquity to Vikings class. It was an absolutely terrible class. The lecturer’s name was Helen. I felt weird calling her by her first name, but she said that we had to. What made the class terrible was that Helen would never just do normal lectures. Instead, she would make us do all these ridiculous educational games. They were supposed to be games that would help you learn, but all they did was make me anxious and very annoyed. There was this stupid game where if you had a question, you had to put up your hand. Then she would run over and put this Viking’s helmet on your head. Even if you were way down the back of the room, in the middle of the row. She would take about ten minutes going all the way across the class just to get to you. Then you had to stand up in your seat and say something like, “I am Eric Ironthorn, Slayer of Champions, and I have a question!” You’d have to make up a Viking name that was supposed to sound very cool. And you had to yell it out, across the room, like Vikings do. And then, if Helen liked the name you had made up, she would say, “What is your question, Eric Ironthorn?” And then you could ask your question. But if she didn’t like the name you made up, like if you just said, “I am Eric Thompson, and I have a question,” then she wouldn’t let you ask your question. She would just say something like, “I do not speak with Vikings with such pathetic titles,” or she’d just shake her head and wave at you to sit down. That made me so mad sometimes! Sometimes I’d even have a question that I wanted to ask, but I wouldn’t ask it, just because I couldn’t think of a good Viking name! It was so stupid. I never asked a single question once in that whole class, just because of her. What if someone couldn’t think of a good name? Or what if they were a bit too shy? Then what? Then they could never ask questions, that’s what. I hated it.
There was another awful thing she did to us at the start of the semester. I arrived on the day of the first lecture, all ready to learn and get excited about the class. But we didn’t learn one single thing. All she did was that she got up in front of the room and told us that the best way to start the semester was by getting to know our fellow classmates. Our class was pretty small, only about thirty people. And she said she had a game for us to play so that we all became friends. It wasn’t even hardly a game; it was just this stupid thing we had to do. We had to go around the room with a piece of paper and talk to every single person in the class. We had to ask them what their name was, and we had to get them to tell us one interesting fact about themselves. Helen said that after about half an hour, we would all have to sit back down. Then, she would call out our names, one by one, and we’d have to stand in front of the class. Then she would choose another name at random, and we would have to tell the whole class what that person’s interesting fact was. Which means we had to get a fact from every single person, just in case she called their name out. It was ridiculous. So I spent half an hour rushing around trying to get a silly fact from each person. And I couldn’t even remember who I’d asked already, and who I hadn’t. There were about ten times when I went up to someone to ask them for their interesting fact, and they said that they had already talked to me. It was so embarrassing! Then I even had to talk in front of the whole class! I don’t even remember who I got to talk about. Some girl who said that her interesting fact was that she used to live in Canada. That was apparently her most interesting fact that she could think of. It was ridiculous. I guess my fact wasn’t too interesting, either. I just couldn’t really think of anything good. Mine was just that I taught myself how to juggle. Which was true. I learned it all by myself one summer when I was about sixteen. I started off practicing with mandarins, because that was all that we had around the house. But eventually, I got pretty good, and I bought some of those proper juggling balls. I got pretty good at it, actually. I suppose it’s not that interesting, but it’s certainly more interesting than Canada.
So I’d written Helen a letter. I had been meaning to slip it under her door at her office, so I figured I better do it then. I went over to the history building where most of my lectures were. While I was walking there, this weird kid came up to me. He didn’t even look like a university student; he only looked like he was about fifteen years old. He seemed very panicked and worried.
“Do you know where Building 206 is?” he said. The strangest thing about him, though, was that he had glitter in his hair. His hair was completely full of this blue glitter. It was everywhere. It had even dropped down over his face and onto his shoulders. And there was even a little piece caught in his eyebrows. He had these very big, bushy eyebrows, too. I couldn’t really stop looking at them. I was very curious about why he had so much glitter all over him, but I didn’t want to ask. I thought it might be a bit impolite.
“Sorry, I don’t know that one,” I said. I didn’t really know buildings’ numbers. Each building at university had a number, but mostly I just called them like ‘history building’ or ‘science building’, because I’m not very good at remembering numbers. But then he started making all these strange noises like he was very upset, almost like he was going to start crying. I felt so bad for him. He was just lost in this big university all covered in glitter. “I can help you find it if you like,” I said. I told him we could go to the student advice building, because they have a giant map there with all the different buildings on it.
He seemed like he was in a pretty big rush, because he started saying, “Which way?” and trying to walk off very quickly, even though I hadn’t even told him which direction it was yet. So I sort of walked very quickly, almost running, just to help him find that building. He didn’t really say anything to me, except, “Which way?” That’s all he really seemed to care about. We made it over to the map very quickly. I bet we might have even set a world record, if we bothered to time it. We had a good look all over the map together, until we eventually saw building 206.
“That’s the old commerce building,” I said. I knew exactly what it was; I just didn’t know it by the number. It used to be the commerce building before they built a big new shiny one a little while ago. I don’t really know what it’s used for now.
I led him back across the university grounds. We ran even faster this time. It was funny, because while he was running, I saw little bits of glitter falling off him. They spun all the way down to the ground. It looked quite cool.
When we got there, I pointed to it and told him it was that one. He ran straight up the stairs and yelled, “Thanks!”
After he’d gone inside, I looked at the sign that said, ‘Old Commerce Building, 260’. It was 260, not 206! I’d taken him to the wrong building! I felt like a total idiot. I actually felt pretty bad, too. I thought about going inside to find him and tell him about my mistake. But he had already run off at a million miles per hour, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to find him again. I decided to just sneak off instead. I felt sort of bad, but I didn’t really want to run all around university with him again. To be honest, I’m not sure if I’d even be able to. My legs actually felt pretty sore when I started walking again. I’d given them quite a workout.
I went back to the history building. It was this kind of small building. It was a little bit smelly, too. I think it was quite old. It certainly didn’t look as nice as some of the other buildings at university. Like the new engineering building, which was this huge big flashy thing that they had renovated only a few years ago. It always looked like there were all sorts of cool things going on in that building. But the history building was always the same. It was just kind of plopped down at the back of the university grounds somewhere. It never really looked like anyone was even in there; it was pretty quiet. I kind of liked it like that though.
I went in and up the staircase on the right. But then I was very stupid. When I was going up the staircase, I started tripping over. I tripped and slid down about four stairs and scraped my shin all the way. It hurt a lot. I didn’t cry though, which I was very happy about. It was just very sore. I started limping up the rest of the stairs. I thought maybe I should turn around and go to the nurse to get my shin checked out. It was bleeding a bit. But I didn’t really want to go to the nurse. I’ve only been to the nurse one other time before when I had a lot of pain in my appendix. It was an awful experience. I didn’t even know it was my appendix at first; I just thought it was just a sore tummy. But the nurse did a bunch of tests where she had to push on my stomach which hurt quite a lot, by the way. I don’t think it’s a very good test if it makes you be in a lot of pain. But after the tests, she said that my appendix was inflamed and that I might need to have it removed. With surgery! I’d never even thought about surgery before. I didn’t think I’d ever need it until I was about a hundred and needed my hip replaced or something. It wasn’t even on my list of worries at the time. But I certainly did start worrying about it then. The nurse had to call my parents, and we went on this big crazy trip to the hospital. I had to wait around for about six hours until a doctor could see me. It was pretty terrible waiting in the hospital like that. I had these very sore pains when I came in, so a nurse gave me some pills that I took right away. It actually helped a lot. I didn’t really feel any pain at all pretty soon. I was just sitting there, waiting around. I even started to forget that I had any pain in the first place at all. I thought maybe it was just a mistake and that I was all better. I tried to get my parents to take me home, because I was feeling a bit bad for making them rush out from work to take me to the hospital. But they said that we couldn’t leave until we’d seen the doctor.
I ended up being pretty happy they made me wait then. Because after quite a few hours, the pain started coming back. It was even worse than before. I was just about rolling around on the floor from the pain when luckily, a doctor came to examine me. They told me they had to do surgery right away. I was pretty scared, honestly. I’d never had anything like that before, and I was worried it would be very painful. But it turned out pretty good. They just put me to sleep and I hardly even felt anything at all. I felt pretty good, actually, when I woke up. I got to just laze around in the hospital bed and watch TV. But what happened after that was the really horrible part. About a day later, a nurse came in to see me. I was all sleepy and exhausted from the surgery and the pills they gave me, and so I was having trouble focusing on a lot of stuff. But she told me that it was time for me to have a shower and that she was going to help me have one, because I was in a weak state. I didn’t really understand, because of the pills and stuff, so I just went along with it at first. She helped me get out of bed and walked me to this special bathroom where they had a lot of safety rails and things for holding on to. Then, what she did was she started trying to take my hospital gown off. I was very confused when that started happening. She was trying to help me get undressed, so that I could get into the shower. I guess she did that stuff all the time, because she was a nurse. But when she started trying to pull my gown down, I started realizing what was going on. I started going a bit crazy, to be honest. I started saying, “No, no, no,” and trying to tell her that I was okay and that I didn’t need anyone to help me take a shower. I was saying that I felt all right now, and that I was fine by myself. But I remember what she said. She said, “Don’t worry, it’s my job,” and she started trying to pull my gown off again. She even kind of did pull it off a bit, and my boobs sort of came out. That’s when I really went psycho and flipped out.
I screamed at her, “Don’t touch me!” I was so embarrassed that this lady was trying to get me naked. I know she was just a professional and everything, and she was doing her job, but I didn’t like it one bit. “Get away from me!” I screamed at her and started hitting her. I was trying to pull my gown up at the same time, because I was half-naked, and I was completely terrified that she could see my boobs and everything.
Then she just started saying, “Okay, okay, it’s okay,” but I don’t think I heard her any more. I think I was totally wacky from being so confused and tired and embarrassed and drugged up. I sort of scratched her in the neck and dug my nails into her skin. Then even she started screaming. We were both sort of screaming around in that little bathroom. Eventually, a couple of other nurses and even a doctor came in and took us both away. I think they gave me some sleeping pills, and I went right to sleep.
So I certainly didn’t want to go to the nurse to get my shin checked out, just in case any funny business like that ever happened again.
I knew where my lecturer’s office was, because I’d been past it a couple of times before. There is a lot of old historical stuff on the walls, like documents and paintings all framed behind glass. I’d looked at them quite a few times before, but I didn’t feel like it just then. When I got to her office, I quickly got the note out from my bag. I hadn’t put it in an envelope, but I thought it was all right. I read through it to make sure it was all correct. My letter said:
Dear Sir or Madame,
I already knew it was a Madame, of course, but I wanted the letter to sound professional.
I want to submit a formal complaint about your terrible teaching in your class. I don’t want to participate in all those silly games, and you shouldn’t force people to do stuff that they don’t want to do!
With warm regards,
Franny
I thought about it for a second and then quickly scribbled out my name. I decided I wanted it to be a secret letter. Sometimes I can be quite sneaky like that. I slid it under her door and then ran away, even though my leg was still feeling a bit sore. I was pretty happy with myself for delivering that letter. I didn’t want that lady to do the same awful stuff to her next students. And now, thanks to me, maybe she wouldn’t.