19-VIII-1980.

I guess it was this day. I got my first job, at the 2nd worst high school around - 13.. The worst one , MPSŠC, was 50m down the street.

The job interview was a formality - I got the job because mine was "the only graduated application" (by the words of the secretary - i.e. no other candidate had a diploma). I was sitting with the principal, with my back to the door. Every now and then someone would enter through the other door (which led to the staff room), but nobody returned that way. I guessed they were trying to get a good look at me, which was only partly true. The major reason was that the dartboard hung on the other side of the door.

I was to sit in for a pregnant colleague, who maybe already given birth (I still don't know when, what, or who exactly - despite this being a smallish town, never met her - her second surname was Smetovački). The pregnancy leave being a whole year, that would get me a year's work (unless she returns some time in may or june, which was also possible). Initially, I was to have three divisions of the 10th grade (aka 2nd grade of "vocationally oriented upbringing and education") in the outer unit in Perlez, which was just three classrooms and a bit of a club in lieu of a staff room). When I actually came to work, it turned out I had three more classes in the afternoon, but in the other oour, this time in "vocationally oriented education and upbringing" - the accent now being on education, i.e. these were the 11th and 12th grade, or 3rd and 4th grade of high school... and their vocations were, to boot: my own division, 4th grade weavers (plus three hatmakers, repeating previous year, because the hatmaker division was run only every other year); one 4th grade division of tailors (all girls, one guy, bass player in some local bands, also a hatter but didn't want to be with those three hoodlums) and one 3rd grade of sheet metal workers - insulators.

Later I heard that many colleagues did take a good look at me, and made a lot of comments in the staff room. That was part of my strategy: to horrify them with my current looks (hair shoulder long; my split beard in the process of growing a bridge; jeans the oldest wearables I could muster; clogs). Then, when I appear on 1st of september, with something more comforting the petit-bourgeois eye, a stone would fall of their hearts and all will be fine.

Which worked. In all the years I was teaching, I heard only one remark from a colleague, something to the lines of "how can I wear a beard while teaching" or some such. The reply was "don't know about you, but in my work I use the inside of my head; the outside is irrelevant".

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Mentions: 13. april, 15-XI-1980., MPSŠC, oour, Smetovački, in serbian