When the car is already gone, I say softly « fuck you » – DiePresse.com

My naivety was destroyed when Mira told me in the first class that I should give her my chocolate. « Give me the chocolate, I’m your best friend. » Giving her the chocolate was no problem for me. As a child, you always got something sweet, and I believed Mira that she wanted to be my best friend. Unfortunately, she ran away with the whole board and never spoke a word with me until the incident with the class book.

Our class book was deep red like the star on the flag. In addition to all our successes and failures, our social background and the diseases, which we had failed, stood inside. The teachers: inside wore the huge, firmly bound book under the armpit, or they held it with one arm in front of their chest like a shield. As if the class book would protect the adults from us. It was exactly the other way around. With the class book, the children were freed from violence and transformed the debt discipline into an administrative measure. Uncontrollable children’s groups were no longer beaten up, her behavior was noted. They were arranged alphabetically, after success, according to address.

With the class book on the head

The records were visible to all authorized people. After several reminders and criminal arrangements, the problem students could be removed from school without ever sent them to the donkey corner or struck them with the stick onto their palms. (Some teachers: Inside did that anyway, you heard stories, but I suspect that these were old stories.)

We used the teachers: the class book inside to easily punch a student on the head – as a half serious threat. Or they banged on the school desk to drown out the noise. That was all. Pluck on the hair or pinch into the cheek, okay, but not real, painful punishments. The class book was an effective alternative to physical violence, it was the calm, institutionalized violence. Even if we didn’t know that at the time, we constantly felt the power of this state instrument. It shaped us. In the class book, our names led a relentlessly simple life. They stood in block letters and endured the notes and comments that were recorded in columns. We, which we were sitting in our school benches, felt these numbers and notes as if it were physical conditions. A one was paralysis, the worst note. A five, on the other hand, was like when you put yourself in the grass on a sunny day. Like a sip of chocolate milk.

My class leader said to Jasmina’s parents about me: « She is a golden child. »

I was not a role model

At that time I log a lot, but I was quiet, pale and my family not Roma. That was enough so that my class leader thought I was a good role model for Jasmina who was Romni. Of course I was not a role model. I looked at the other children, tried to control them, to make friends with them and keep them by my side. And failed. Then I used measures that I knew. At the back, on the last page of the class book, the professions of our parents were recorded. If a parent was dead, instead of the profession there was a line: – We went to a funeral for everyone.