Testing.

'Today you have a test,' Javier announces as we enter the room.
Oh.
He's smiling at us.
I want to punch him right in his Castilian chops.
A little prior notice might have been nice.
Some time to prepare perhaps.
It was only the day before yesterday that we last saw him.
So why spring it on us like this?
And there's only about half the class present.
Not that there's anything unusual about that.
In fact it's a significantly higher turn-out than normal
But had the absentees known there was a test scheduled for today they may well have made the effort to drag their grubby adolescent arses out of bed and show up.

As Javier hands out the single sheet of paper that constitutes the test, he reassures us, 'You don't have to worry. Ees a seemple test and everytheeng we have already covered in class.'
I glance over the sheet and am relieved to note he's not lying.
He tells us we can leave the classroom once we have finished and that we can start straight away.
I get through the exercises speedily enough and am about to hand him back the sheet when he says, 'There's more on the other side.'
Flipping over the piece of paper, it becomes clear that here lie the more complicated exercises.
The traps into which me may fall.
There is a whole section on irregular and reflexive verbs.
We haven't yet covered irregular or reflexive verbs.
I know this because I only have one blemish on my otherwise pristine attendance record.
And I had the good sense to check with one of my class-mates what I'd missed in my absence.
Nada, I was reliably informed.

Try as a I may, I just cannot complete this section.
It is a paragraph about a student's daily routine.
The fictional female is telling us how she passes her day and we are supposed to fill in the 10 blanks using the appropriate verb (from a supplied list of 10) conjugated correctly in the present tense.
I feel completely lost.
And a bit panicky.
I know the message the verbs are supposed to convey from the context of the words surrounding the blanks.
But I have no idea what each of the verbs means.
I might as well be looking at Algebra.
I make a half-hearted crack at the first 4.
But it's complete guess-work so I decide to abandon the rest.

I finish the remainder of the paper to the best of my abilities and hand it to Javier before walking out of the room in disgust.
I wasn't the first to leave.
Which increases my anxiety about my ability in Spanish.
5 or 6 walked through the door before me.
The implication is that they found it easier than me.
Despite the fact we are all beginners, I am, or at least I think I am, one of the best in the class.

I head for the Arts Café (where else?) for tea and sympathy.
As I drown my sorrows and dunk my bourbon in an over-priced brew, I see one of the guys from my class chatting with a friend at a neighbouring table.
I shove the soggy biscuit in my mouth and without so much as a by-your-leave, I gather my belongings and relocate to join them.
'How did you find the test?' I ask him, inadvertently spraying crumbs on the sleeve of his companion.
He appears not to notice so I say nothing.
'Well apart from the fact Javier hasn't taught us those irregular verbs, it was fine,' he says sarcastically.
I feel a sense of relief.
This young man, whose name I never bothered to learn, is definitely one of the more gifted in Spanish.
I may even go so far as to say he's better than me.
Though it pains me to do so.

It transpires his friend is a student from the lovely Ana's class and has just sat the same test.
It seems her class was fully prepped and spent two of the previous lessons concentrating on reflexive and irregular verbs.
I am seething.
I chat with whatshisname about the part of the test we have collectively screwed up.
And we express our shared dissatisfaction with Javier.
On further analysis, involving my pocket Spanish dictionary, I can only laugh as the details of my errors emerge.
The paragraph of the student's daily life, with the correct choice of verbs should read, 'Every day I get up at 8am. I take a shower at 8.30...'
Thanks to my erroneous verb selection, my student appears to lead a more, shall we say, hedonistic lifestyle.
A rough translation of my uneducated endeavour is, 'Every day I go to bed at 8am. I get up at 8.30...'

I guess my version of events is slightly more realistic.
Half an hour? That's a power-nap!
I remember frequently getting by on that little sleep in my first failed pursuit of a degree.
Note the word 'failed'.

©Alacoque Doyle