The gas station attendant who studied human sciences

But now afternoon and I’m out of school. I pull over to get gas. Prof, do you remember me? I’m Vetrano !. The guy who just changed my money at the plant is over twenty and immediately realizes my difficulty.

And of course you don’t remember, I was only one year with you. Then I left. You taught us science, in the first place….

Maybe humanities…, I try to correct.

Eh, bravo! Human sciences, yes….

Imagine. In that professional near the sea, for those like Vetrano, at first, the attempt was to get them to come to school the next day and the humanities were just the pretext.

And now you work here? Do you have a contract ?.

Yes, but a provisional thing. They declare that they give me eight hundred and instead they give me four hundred for six days a week… too little, prof.

Eh, the gas station attendant is a dying profession, Vetrano….

You’re right, prof, the one in my boss we don’t like Moroccans, that’s why he cares about me… For… I remember something, prof !.

At school you used to make us study schools all over the world, do you remember? The American school, the school in Kenya … I did the research on the Japanese school. U, one capata, prof! Those do not keep the janitors, the classrooms and toilets if they clean them by themselves, the children and teachers! Do you remember? Those class females said: eh, I nun ‘o did mai! They were pissed! What laughter… And instead you….

And instead you said it was a thing done well. So everyone took responsibility for him. So everyone thought twice before making the class a fetenzia… u, beautiful, prof! But then did this thing happen here at our school in Italy?

No, Vetrano, we are not Japanese … but what are you going to do now ?.

I don’t know, prof. Now let’s see. Maybe I sign up for the evening. My mother went to talk. Mo ‘let’s see … Even the janitor for I would like !.

The school worker….

Yes, oh well prof, but how do you become a janitor collaborator ?.

I think about it for a moment. There will be a contest … come on, let’s exchange cell phones, then I’ll ask and I’ll call you. I get your call and I memorize the number.

Vetrano… Vincenzo ?, I’m guessing.

Ah, sure, Gaetano, right !, I say, nodding conspicuously and smiling with the air of someone who says: ah, what a head I have, I’m really getting old.

At the traffic lights on Viale Kennedy, half an hour later, I will suddenly remember everything. Nino Vetrano, the place he occupied near the window, the mess he made with his friends throughout the hour of lessons, the stadium choirs and the fact that by dint of talking about Naples I was trying to teach something. And then the speech on that history of the Japanese school. I insisted precisely on personal responsibility, on the fact that beyond social and family conditioning, everyone’s life is in their own hands. And that we had to believe it.

Of Vetrano perhaps to make a sign to Chiara. In Cardamone no. He would conclude that I don’t know how to deal with young proletarians, that I only know how to deceive them and it would also be difficult to blame them this time.

Nino Vetrano. Your destiny is not decided by your zip code, I said. Yes I remember.