CHAPTER TWO: I’M HAPPY
“If someone calls you a retard, you’re supposed to be angry, don’t laugh,” Harry Scarface told me one day.
I nodded. But then I thought of something, “If it’s you who call me that, I won’t be angry.”
Harry Scarface nodded too.
But still, I immediately ran into trouble.
During French class, our French teacher Prof. Flitwick taught us how to say ‘Hello’ in French. I followed exactly what everyone read ‘Bon-sure, Bon-sure’, yet the teacher said I read it wrong.
He stood in front of me, lowered her head and let me see his lips.
“See? You have to pronounce the J and the Sh at the same time and not read out the R.”
He looked almost like those kissing fish I see in TV.
I tried real hard to follow him. I curled my lips so high that my drool almost sprayed out, yet he still wasn’t satisfied. He yelled angrily, “What is it with you? Why can’t you learn a single thing I’m teaching you? You retard!”
I don’t know if I should be angry or not.
I asked Harry Scarface about it during recess and he answered me with a troubled look, “Teachers are different from us; they can do whatever they want. There’s nothing we can do.”
Our English teacher, who’s also our class teacher—Miss Minerva McGonagall—treats me better. She gave me an exercise book with a lot of lines in it and asked me to copy words for the day’s class chapter. While the others read and discuss the chapters, I’ll be copying them.
I’m really good at copying. When I was in grade school, my teacher would let me copy words, line after line. I’ve forgotten what those words were though, or else I could write them for Harry Scarface to see and prove that I’m really good at copying.
To be honest, I love school. Summer holidays are boring with nothing but TV to watch. Mother never lets me go to the waffle shop. I want to help her serve waffles, but she never agrees. She would always scold me and say, “Do you want the whole world to know that I have a retarded son?”
That’s a really tough question. I never know how to answer that. I always thought that if Mother knew that I was a retard, then she didn’t have to give birth to me. But maybe she didn’t know that I would be one.
When I’m at school, I have Harry Scarface to talk to. Sometimes, girls would come and talk to me, but I can’t really understand what they’re saying, so all I can do is laugh.
Our class monitor is the world’s most beautiful girl named Hermione Granger. Harry Scarface also agreed that she’s pretty. But she’s a fierce girl and often scolds and yells at Draco Malfoy—the yellow-haired boy. Sometimes she scolds me, but she never calls me a retard. She remembers my name.
My job in class is to get water. The students in my class are heavy drinkers and they drain their cups within minutes. Prof. McGonagall would always say, “It’s class time, so the kitchen won’t have many people. Go get us water before they run out of it.”
I would then grab the kettle, run past each class, past the field and go into the kitchen to get fresh water. On the old oak tree in the field there are a lot of birds singing and they sound good. Sometimes I would stand under the oak tree and listen, and would sometimes giggle, ‘coz there’s one bird who sounded just like my French teacher.
I love school. Everyday when I carry my bags to school and do my copying, carry water for the class and eat my lunch, I feel happy.
Hermione told me one day, “Ronald Weasley, I envy you.”
I only understood half of what she said.
She sighed and continued, “Honestly, being a retard ain’t so bad. No worries, no tuition, and no need for all that exam bother.”
Now that, I definitely have no idea what she meant. But when she said the word ‘retard’, I wasn’t angry. I didn’t think she was laughing at me.
I’m still happy.
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