For remedial exams I'd usually be the first or the second member of the examining trio - which means as an expert member, not as the formal third member, who'd be in charge of filling the paperwork. That would happen to me on other exams - the graduations, or when the truckers from Loznica came to get qualified. I was of soft and goodie fame as a professor, and some would celebrate when they'd hear I'd be teaching them the following year.
Among us was an older colleague, with just a stump of his right arm. The story circled that he writes the aces with his left and twos with his right. He was, or at least sounded, strict and formal, though I have no idea what his classes looked like. Actually nobody knows what goes on in classes of others, we're alone with the class all the time. So the fame had me as soft and popular, him as harsh and stiff.
And then the popravni comes and... when we count the candidates, it turns we're equal. Half his, half mine, sometimes he has one more candidate than I, sometimes one less. I guess we stuck to our criteria. Our exam would begin, what with preparation and seat distribution, around 7, and would sometimes end around 18. Because of the sheer number of candidates. We didn't try to speed it up, everyone had his chance. (not "their" chance, these were all males... there'd be one or two girls per generation, and they wouldn't fare so badly to reach the remedial)
It happened, maybe this time, maybe next year or one after, that we simply had too many candidates. Perhaps Ilinka's got mixed up with ours, so they wouldn't fit into the assigned classroom. We agreed to take half of them into the next one, and so I shouted out the order that those sitting next to the window come with me, those next to them stay, then next also go... so odd-even I took half of them with me, urging them to do it quickly and quietly, we don't want them to waste their time, hurry up. So this guy, Spasić called Car (czar, that is, for he addressed anyone with that title) got moved away from the place he carefully prepared. He was in the rear corner by the window, a spool of fishing line in his pocket, ready to tie the task sheet to it, lower it through the ajar window, to his buddy on the outside. The guy would then write the solutions, tie them to the line, yank it, the Car would then pull it up, copy the solution, submit it as his, pass the year. Except the pal was now waiting in vain on the outside of the building, as this guy was in a yard side classroom.
The next year he was in one of my classes, third grade second time (or was it third? or did he repeat some previous year? he was a tad older). I somehow got wind of all this then, from other kids, and was almost sorry. Not for him falling the year, for me having to suffer him all year. A sleaze he was.
Last year he wore sunshades for several days in a row. A tad early, it was only spring, and even stranger, he wore them inside too. Just once, passing through the yard, I noticed it was because he was heavily bruised around both eyes. As one colleague said „whoever did him like that... may his hand be gilded“.
I later heard he did things like contracting with Students' to mow the grass in the little park on the bank between court and pedestrian bridge. He'd hire some old man from his village, then pay him about a quarter of what he'd get, and just sit in the shade while the guy did the work. There were other pearls in his carreer... and I think we met on another remedial a year later, but at least this time he was forced to learn something, other tricks didn't work.
The MPSŠC was getting reorganized at the time. The first bit of news was that "the traffic goes out of the center", which I welcomed as a walker and biker. It was really about time that turning the main street into pedestrian zone be expanded from the 17:00-01:00 or some such period into permanent. But no, it was the traffic section (car mechanics, drivers) would be moved into the agricultural school, and the electric section would be joined by construction from 13. and would become the new electro-masonry school, in the space where third gimnazija used to be.
The oours were rescinded gradually, and the schools were being put together. Two ground floor classrooms were put together (the school was a steel frame building, with partitioning walls freely dismountable, which sometimes led to cases when one classrooms light switch was in the other classroom) to make a new staff room for some sixty people. And the principal will be neither the mathematician Brane Simonović from PUVO, nor the engineer (probably the Rijeka school, just like the rest of the vintage) Raša Stajin from PUOV, but rather some Krle Vlajić, a historian or some such social stuff guy.
The newlyrefounded MPSŠC was to be named after some famous WWII fighter, not of people's hero rank, who died recently so nothing yet got named after him*. He was just a major provincial politician. I remember that we ran an article in the squadron newspaper when he died. It was considered a done thing, I know I got the forms to fill my annual work plan with this name in the heading, and I've seen a few other printed things with it.
But then the game was called off. The comrades from SSRN (socialist union of working people, an umbrella organization for any citizens' organization, including DC-99 and sport clubs, a rather unimportant cogwheel in the mechanism) said no, we can't allow such a texas of a school to bear the name of such a distinguished comrade. It took whole three years for him to be completely forgotten by all except those who knew him personally, and SSRN didn't even have any jurisdiction over the matter, but the new principal was a party man, so he had to have an ear for their say, and they had to show themselves as awake and important. So, no go.
Then he went in search of a new name, and found it. He dug up some fighter from the spanish war, who was the gorilla for Tempo or some other big shot then, the secret guy for dealings behind the scenes, so for secrecy reason he was almost perfectly undocumented, practically untraceable. He found just two pages about him. But, the school bore his name for the next ten-fifteen or more years (I lost count), for two good reasons. First, he finished the railway school here, which is considered a precursor of MPSŠC (even though there's no continuity - no people can be traced to have worked in both schools, nobody even knows in which building it was etc). The other reason was that this guy was from principal's village. Done.
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* eventually nothing was named afer him. This one chance was blown.