02 The Sophists

I will now describe three of the tutors I was assigned during high school through my parents:

For a long time, on every gloomy Monday after school, I would peer despondently through the back window of my parent’s restaurant. There, parked in the dirt parkway would be a bluish-purple Barina, the scanty carriage of my very first sophist. Her name was Christina, but I shall use the pseudonym Calabariidae. She was my English tutor and cerebral groomer. I had been seeing her since grade 3, right through to VCE. It had been my migrant parents that had arranged this. They had left respectable, good paying jobs in Ceylon for kitchen aprons. In doing this they had committed themselves to the goal of ascertaining for me a bona fide education. Why, however, had they hired this greying, unattractive, cigarette-reeking Greek lady to teach me still baffles me. And so, this sophist and I would sit down at my desk in the restaurant storeroom, amid the bags of onions and buckets of ghee, and we would launch upon the dire and serious task of 'educating’ me. And every selected theme or book we studied became the platform on which salient notions such as class-systems and scarcity were built on. And at times it even became necessary for her to teach me to label my parents as lower-middle class. This became the ‘diamond-bullet’ to which I began to view everything.

“I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God… the genius of that.”

Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now (1979)

Sophist No. 1: Christina (Calabariidae)

It was in year 10 that I met Sophist No. 2, a tall, dark-skinned, lanky, pot-bellied, blazer wearing South African man who my parents felt I needed get through my pre-VCE taster-subject of General Mathematics. His most favorite thing to do was to snatch my report card off me and flick through it. He would provide a nonchalant, observational comment on each subject, like how I didn’t score straight As in Science, or that he was surprised that I scored an A+ in my history exam, etc. And despite being paid quite generously by my poor parents, I would notice that he wouldn't actually do that much. He would sit there passively as I did my homework, thinking it fine to fiddle his thumbs. And after a few sessions the fee of $45 was deemed insufficient for his esteemed services. He then also required as a token, a fresh rice packet from the restaurant kitchen as additional tutelage, 'Tell your parents that we have finished and that I require my rice packet,' he would say. And he had a peculiar way of talking and accentuate, of putting sentences together, because I think he believed it made him sound more educated. It was imperative that I distinguish him as educated. And when I told him I was not taking any Units 1/2 in year 10 like all the other, more contentious, shrewd students, he would approach this with a degree of pointedness and disparagement, 'Why aren't you doing one?' By the end of year 10, with even my parents acknowledging that he wasn't actually doing shit, and my results, whilst not bad, were in no shape improving, we decided to relieve him of duty by simply not contacting him to reengage for year 11. And I was pretty sure his ego didn't like this one bit because Mum told me how she had bumped into him somewhere and he just sharply backtracked and walked off without saying anything. This was my experience with Sophist No. 2.

Sophist No. 2: Dave

Having dismissed Sophist No. 2, my parents wanted to find me a new Maths tutor, especially now that I was in year 11 and doing Units 1/2 in Methods, and also the other maths subject that led to Maths Specialist. Some of my friends had been going to a popular, group tuition class called 'Jacks’. It was hosted by a short, self-appointed genius named 'Jack’. Jack was Asian. He used his converted garage in the suburbs of Springvale as a classroom. For him I think the pseudonym of Jackarse is appropriate. On my first day C-3PO was insistent on talking face-to-face with this man, and Jack, looking me up and down, dispensed to him some words of reassurance. And so for year 11 and a portion of year 12 I went to Jackarse for Methods and Specialist tuition. He also provided to other students tuition in Chemistry, Biology and Physics. I don't think Jackarse ever took me very seriously. He always ignored me whenever I put up my hand to answer any of his questions. The unusual thing for me about his classes was that they were co-ed, and having never really talked to a girl, having since year 7 gone to all-boys school, I felt a little shy and out of my element in Jackarse's garage. And girls would pick up on this. Some would, quite immaturely, issue me to do things for them, and they observed my meek, unquestioning subservience. This one time I sat next to a girl and built up a conversation. This was enough of Jackarse to suddenly take notice of me, for in the next class he, having intel that this particular girl had a boyfriend, jokingly asked her in front of everyone if she was cheating. I remember feeling really embarrassed and red. The thing about his classes was that no one really went there to learn or be tutored. It was just one big opportunity to socialize. Even Jackarse would spend a great deal of time talking about irrelevant things like his divorce, or how to treat girls right. For this dosage of wisdom, he would stand at the door at the end of the class and collect everyone’s tuition fees, in cash. Although he only charged $20 cash per session, since there were so many of us, it was obvious he was making a grubby killing. It was only later when I was in Uni that someone told me his whole operation had been put on hold as the ATO had started investigating him for tax fraud. That was my experience with Sophist No. 3.

Sophist No. 3: Jack