# I Remember You-ou... #

Oh, I've been here before. There's a nasty glint of defiance in her eyes, and I know this could be about to turn ugly. I must keep the tremor from my voice.
I must not, must not back down now. The mobile phone is hers. She made her friend ask for it back to avoid punishment.
I have followed procedure. I warned them I would, so now I am going to take the phone away.
Following through looks and feels messy. Do it anyway. Make it happen NOW.

In Italian, and in other Romance languages, when you're talking about grammatical gender it only takes one masculine object in a group of feminine ones to turn the group on its head. Put one masculine thing in with a bunch of feminine ones and the whole damn lot becomes masculine.

A similar thing can happen at school. By and large, the kids here are a good bunch. I was mildly amused to make it through the first day without being told to fuck off. A week and a half later that still hasn't happened, and I can't believe my luck. Perhaps these places aren't all the same after all. I did a LISTENING activity with Year 9, for crying out loud! Occasionally a little voice will even break through the 1812 Overture-type clamour of last lesson with Year 8. I like her. She's nice.

Well, I like you too.

But this one is going to undo 209 students worth of good work. This morning I bounced along the corridors, tossing out ciaos like Smarties and grinning like an idiot at children I'm not even sure I teach. Now I'm going to sneak into the staff meeting through a side door and hope to God no-one asks me to introduce myself. I'm Trout, and I'm crap at this. I may have done the right thing by the book, but still I'm going to drive home with the radio off and crawl into bed not sure if I'm up to this at all. It only takes one.

But this she must not know. Make it happen NOW. She's making the sorry face, but in 30 seconds I'll be 'such a bitch' as she walks home with her friends. I take the phone that they planted in the bookshelf and made ring until I found it halfway through the class and take it to the office. Learning how to do this again starts NOW.