With These Few Points of Mine.

I had a memory, yesterday. A memory from a distant lifetime. And it was all triggered by the word, "literacy."

It's not a very long story, but it is incredibly embarrassing for a teacher, especially when the memory had to do with definitions.

It was my first day as a Creative Writing teacher, and I'd been asked to go to the existing Creative Writing teacher - whose job I hadn't realised I was taking at the time - for guidance on being a Creative Writing teacher.

(I hope I have sufficiently set this story up for the everlasting cringe of embarrassment that still tightens the innermost parts of my belly even as I recollect the events that transpired.)

I'd had my own lofty plans, going in. I was going to teach these kids how to write stories. I was going to take the five W's and H, break it down into little chunks, mix it up with a little bit of age-appropriate literature, and churn out future Enid Blytons. So of course I was only talking to her to find out what she'd been doing so far, you know, maybe bridge the gap between our approaches, a bit. I don't know, I assumed there'd be some sort of partnership? I don't know, I don't know.

So she said. Okay. Where do I start. Here's what we do. Basically, literacy. Do you know what literacy is.

Do I. Masters in writing, over here. BA in English, ma'am. The language, and the litera-chure of the thing. What a question, do I know what literacy is.

So I said yes.

And then she had the nerve to ask, okay, what is it.

And, not knowing enough to smell the rat that was hidden under the flurry of misplaced pride I was basking in (Masters. In. Writing. Thankyouverymuch), I said, with a smirky smile, "Being literate. Being able to read and write."

Oh, ladies and gentlemen, the bubble of laughter that burst forth from her lips, uncontrolled and unrestrained, still rings in my ear to this day.

After she managed to control herself, she smiled and said, yea, yea, and then excused herself, leaving me alone to puzzle over the happenings of the morning.

No doubt she'd gone off to tell her friends to countdown until I would fall flat on my face, get fired, and get my ass off her seat, for good.

***

Okay, so here's what literacy is: Remember when you were in primary school, and you had a subject called "English", where you studied comprehension and spelling and grammar? That's what literacy is. It is a subject, not the descriptive word for the ability to communicate via the written word.

The twin of the subject, Literacy, is Numeracy, which we used to call, "Mathematics."

With these few words of mine, I hope I've been able to convince and not confuse you, of the degree of embarrasment it was for one to have started a job and to have had one's lack of qualification so thoroughly exposed on one's first day.