It was in England, "a Frenchman in London":)

I was just 19 years old and I had come to work in catering thanks to an association at the time: "European Students". I was a dishwasher in a large restaurant, full of good intentions and determined to improve my English...

No way to use my electric razor… The London Underground paralyzes me…, Driving on the left has almost cost me my life more than once… Just by crossing a street, I barely earn enough to pay for my cigarettes and pay for a tiny "homestay" room: a fairly low-end small English family. I feel very small and vulnerable, so far from my countryside!

Diving is very hard! You have to go very fast and keep up the pace! The copper pans arrive really hot in the sink and in the confusion, I often grab them with both hands: I have cruel burns on my fingers, hands, and forearms, some crusts threaten to infect, I don't know anything about my health cover: it's not social security. here… In short, I am panicked and not at all on my plate to see depression on the edges.

I had a fixed idea "you are one of the representatives of your old country: Show yourself up to it! Also, I behaved as best as I could: courteous, kind, self-effacing, helpful, and very grateful to be welcomed by our cousins ​​across the Channel.

Until the day when this "charming" middle-aged English Woman who put me up in her house for rent of more than half my pay came out with something seemingly innocuous but which was sent to the direct mat. One tirade from him was enough for me and the next day I looked for another accommodation. It was in English and I don't have a very precise memory of it, but it was like "pfff, French wine is nothing! I don't care and you don't deserve it". I don't remember exactly, but it was said with a kind of smirk based on jealousy, envy, contempt, and racism. I was only 19, she was around 45, I owed her respect and didn't speak the language.

Racism, sometimes even without serious consequences, can really get to the guts... My purpose is not to put on trial those whom some people maliciously call "rosbeefs" but simply an attempt to put myself in the shoes of those who come from so far away and arrive here with us sometimes with death on their heels:-(

How complicated!

A few years ago I was on a TGV between Lille and CDG airport. I had taken a first-class hoping to travel peacefully. It's only a few minutes before the departure of the TGV that I see two couples arrive and four children aged between 6 and 10 who settle in the seats closest to me. All these little people were obviously going on vacation and were going to get off at CDG. And what I feared happened. Excited children were running around shouting, I could say goodbye to my quiet hour. I put my book away with an exasperated sigh. During this time the adults had decided to celebrate their departure on vacation and had brought out the champagne and the cakes. One of them, seeing my annoyance, did two things that made me smile. He first tells the children to calm down, which they did with some sweets, then he excused himself and invited me to share the champagne and the cakes with them. It was certainly my most pleasant TGV journey. We then talked about travel and vacations. Like what, what starts badly can sometimes end very well.

A laptop theft in front of me while I slept on the train (RER), I heard the doors ringing before departure, a guy running into the car, a woman screaming and the doors closing just behind the thief. He put on his balaclava for the cameras outside and presto.

When you're holding your cell phone in one hand and someone comes at full speed behind your back, it's unstoppable.

Oh…. So many tricks!

Here are two.

Two-seat double seats facing each other in a shielded subway. On the seats opposite mine, two women sit down. On the last seat, next to me, a young girl who accompanied them sits down. The woman opposite her, something I don't understand, straightens up, grabs her arm, and violently pulls her out of her seat to sit a boy older than her in her place. The little one starts to cry, struggles to stand, gets pushed around by the crowd. And gets argued again. I get up, lean over the little one with a smile and gently lead her to sit down in my place.

And the most absurd thing I've had. I'm waiting for the bus, quiet, smoking my cigarette. A guy comes up to me, tells me he's the “green dragon” and asks me if I want to be his “white dragon” by clasping his forearms in front of his face. Uh… what? Thereupon he said to me “Do you know Indiana Jones? Bah, it's me, I found the Saphir but the city of Lyon, they stole it from me, motherfuckers! …. scrog net bbl… do you have any food?” And pulls away.

Oh la la, how can we forget THAT night! :D

Everything starts well, we meet with some friends in the house of one of them to spend a good evening, eat, drink, laugh, talk about everything and anything, but the most important: play an RPG! ^^

Everything is going really well despite my anxiety about the basement (where the bedrooms were and I don't know what other room). I feel like bad energy, which prevents me from breathing in as I pass in front of the staircase, and I feel like I'm observing in a really threatening way. Well, too bad, I'm used to this kind of thing, I focus on the evening. Everything is fine, we're really having fun, then some friends come down to see if the bunny is fine after we all hear a strange noise (like a heavy object falling to the ground). I'm staying upstairs with 2 other friends when suddenly there's a shock in the back of my head. I turn around to yell at the guy who threw something at me but I see no one, just a ping-pong ball rolling on the floor following the violent shock against my head. Alright…

Good there, I ask quite harshly to the c*uillon who threw it at me to renounce himself. I know it's not the ones staying upstairs, they were facing me. Except that… Well, all the others were downstairs, we saw it and above all, we of course all went up quickly (the stairs creaked so much that even a ninja master would have failed to try to take the stairs without making any noise).

We all look at each other a little bewildered, we don't understand. Well, I put the ball back on the buffet and we are about to resume our session. BAM!

And a new attack of the bullet on my poor skull! There they all freaked out though.

So it ended in an exorcism session and I never went back to this person. I don't know if the spirit that attacked me is still there, but I don't want to go and check anyway. XD

I swear never to do the job of the executioner even for a billion euros per month, as a reminder, the executioner is a person who inflicted the corporal sentences pronounced by a repressive court (the death penalty) and/or a person who tortures someone, physically or morally". 

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the executioner did not limit his work to carrying out capital punishments, he was obliged to take on other tasks such as torture, the rendering of dead animals, the capture of stray dogs, the burials of torture victims and suicides, the cleaning of cesspools or the surveillance of brothels.

He was hated and despised. This contempt for society manifested itself in a thousand ways. For a long time, the executioner was described as "operator", "masters of low and high works". Multiple nicknames have been attributed to them: the carnivorous, the breaker, Jean-corpse, … And also Charlot Cassebras (torture of the wheel), the name of Charlot comes from the famous Samson family, executioner from father to son for more of a century.

But above all the fact of calling an executioner “executioner” greatly displeased him, to the point of dragging those who employed him before the courts.

It is not a student but a class on the initiative of a student who preferred to remain anonymous.

It was twenty-five years ago. Every Friday evening from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., I found a class of Terminale STG (now STMG). Mostly big guys who tried to impress me by coming to claim points from the top of their 1.90 meters. They scared me a little but I didn't tell them. Some were snorting coke, others had smoked so much in the afternoon that I had to wake them up. The young girl in front of me was an orphan, lived in a foster home, and was pregnant by her next-door neighbor who was just getting out of prison. I know, it can be a little Cosette, but it still exists. Not a very receptive audience although a few students were trying to work. They always greeted me at this hour singing "we're on the weekend, we're on the weekend, we're, we're,

They pissed me off but I liked them anyway. They were a bit rebellious and I liked that. And above all, I tried to understand them and encourage them as best I could. They had abilities but the little method and above all other preoccupations. Not easy. They tried to stand up to me and I stood up to them too while respecting them. They were forbidden to tell me that they were useless.

One day, I asked them to take a sheet to do the assigned assignment. They told me that I hadn't told them anything before, that nothing was planned. I tried to convince them to get to work, but nothing happened.

And there it went on its own. And yet, I pay attention to my vocabulary in class:

"You really take me for a bitch!"

They said nothing, took a sheet, and did their homework. They must have seen that they had exceeded the limits.

In the next class, not a sound, which, given the class, was rather disturbing. As I wrote the date on the board, I felt a presence behind me. I turned around and there I saw the great blue heron in the class, a huge bouquet of flowers in his hand.

"But who is it for?"

"Well, this is for you, ma'am, from the whole class."

"But why ?"

"There's a map inside."

I took the card from the envelope and I read "Madame, you are not taken at all for what you believe, quite the contrary".

And there, the somewhat (understatement) sensitive teacher who was flexing her muscles so as not to get eaten felt the tears welling up in her eyes.

"But ma'am, don't cry, it's true, you understand us".

Just to write this twenty-five year later, I am still moved by it.

It was these students from so-called "less prestigious" classes because of their technology who made this kind of gesture and came to thank us at the end of the baccalaureate results.

As a student, what is the most obnoxious answer a teacher has ever given you?

During a math class, when I was in CM1. Let's call this teacher Mrs. W.

We were doing subtraction as usual, when I had an idea and raised my hand:

Teacher: What's wrong?

Me: *excitedly* Ms. W., if we can do 380 minuses 190, is it possible to do the reverse?

The teacher: * amused look * What do you mean, "do the opposite"?

Me: As if… we were subtracting a large number from a small number! Is it possible to do 20 minus 140? Gold 2 minus 34500? Would the answer be 0 or something else?

 The teacher: Of course not, obviously you can't. If you have 4 apples, can you give me 6? No, isn't it?

Me: *thoughtful* But... I could give you the 4 apples, have 0 apples in my possession, but you owe the two apples that are missing, right? Is it possible to owe someone numbers, in some way?

The teacher: Numbers don't work like that.

As soon as I walked out of class, I asked the same question to my other teacher. At least he told me that it was possible and that I would learn about it later when I grew up.

I was in 5th grade. That day, as usual, I had to chat a little. The math teacher started screaming to start the class; she looked me straight in the eye, I will always remember her hateful gaze: “I want to point out that if you got “the congratulations” know that it was ABSOLUTELY against my will! such a waste!!! I confirm that you absolutely do not deserve them!!!! ». I was far from imagining that I had been granted this distinction, especially since there was only one awarded this term in my class. I wanted to run away and go hide. You can't imagine the damage that this type of remark can do to a pre-teen in search of recognition.

When I got home, I remember hiding, locked up, 2 hours in the toilet to cry hot tears without saying a word before going back to school on an empty stomach.

Today, every time I receive a gratuity at work, his hateful face resurfaces. The timbre of his voice still sometimes resonates with me.

“You cheated. You didn't write that." In the second class, I was one of only nine students who had gone from the city's HLM neighborhood college to the downtown high school which welcomed the children of the bourgeois, lawyers, notaries, doctors, and other notables of the city. In the second class, there was an exchange with a German class and during this exchange, we had to write a report of our visits to Germany. So I wrote this report and my main teacher, also a history-geo teacher, gave me back my graded assignment, the mark crossed out and divided by two. And that's the answer she gave me when I went to ask her for an explanation at the end of class. His justification: "the vocabulary is too rich, you don't know all these words, you must have had it written by someone else. And in the face of my indignant denials, she proceeded to ask me for the definitions of some of these words. What struck me was that she believed, among other things, that I did not know the definition of the word “lush” that I had used to describe the gardens of my twin city. She was forced to admit her mistake but did not apologize and I retained a deep sense of injustice and class contempt on her part. Even more, when after the first class council, I learned from the mouth of my boyfriend at the time, then a delegate, that I had obtained the best results in the entry tests into second, not from the class, but from the whole school. Only, this very old lady from France thought that a worker's daughter living in public housing had no chance of having a rich vocabulary or of being more cultured than these children of doctors/notaries/lawyers to whom she was accused. While these students were among the most culturally contemptuous I have ever known, they didn't give a damn about anything that didn't have "useful value" to get them into the posh prepares they were aiming for. … Anyway, that's how I learned class contempt at 15.