#9 Tuition

A Valuable Souvenir: Tuition

Sometimes I wish I listened better. My friend Lenka told me all about her friend Ivana getting caught by the tram inspector without a ticket but I didn’t really pay attention. Since my first visit to the Czech Republic, living there while my husband was on a Fulbright, I’ve wondered what would happen if I got caught without a ticket and without money for the fine, and without identification which everyone says you must travel with. I always had a tram pass then and I almost never carry identification when I’m in Brno because
I’m afraid of losing my passport. My imagination of the process of getting to the embassy in Prague for a new one would be a textbook example of extreme neurosis. I’d spend too much time deciding what to wear, vacillating between dressing well, so as not to draw suspicion at the embassy, or dressing down, so I wouldn’t attract too much attention on the street. I’m unreasonably afraid my ticket would be examined by the only official on the train who truly despised Americans for some grievance I couldn’t possibly apologize for in Czech, or in English. And he’d demand my passport, for sure.

Haunted by scenes from movies about the KGB, I would shrink from every man in a dark suit all the way to the embassy doors. And once there, I would be as nervous as I was sitting in the hall at school, waiting for the principal to come get me. But it wouldn’t be as bad as I felt the day I got caught without a valid tram ticket.

The inspector wordlessly thrust his palmed badge at me, then moved towards the back of the tram. I pulled my unvalidated ticket out of my pocket, and looked across the aisle at the yellow validation machine about a yard away. “I’ll just pop across there and stamp this thing,” I thought, but before I could move, the inspector was back, standing between me and the school bus yellow box which advertised my lost salvation in the form of a tiny slot below a cheerfully blinking arrow. Why didn’t I validate it when I had the chance?
The inspector, the very vision of Ordinary Czech Guy in his T-shirt, shorts, and new running shoes (inspectors seem to all wear running shoes, new ones, the better to chase you in, my dear) stood scowling over me. I handed him my ticket, my crisp, fifteen-crown, sixty- minute ticket that would have gotten me a nice ride on the train, across greened valleys and the graceful bridges arched liked Roman aquaducts. My unvalidated, useless piece of paper.

“It’s not validated,” he growled in Czech. Suddenly, I was seven years old and in the hall again, my scissors and paperdolls tucked under my dress, waiting for Ms Boykin, the meanest principal who ever lived, and wondering if she would believe I had been sent out of the classroom for no reason.

“Nemluvim Czesky,” I lied. “I don’t speak Czech.” But the inspector spoke English, and I had to hand over all of the cash I had with me, seven hundred crowns, money I had planned to spend on a nice souvenir—maybe some handmade pottery, a pretty garnet pendant, or etched Bohemian wineglasses. I grimly pondered my luck in having had just enough money for the fine.
When my son asked what kind of souvenir I got, I told him I had gotten a kind of diploma. “Diploma?!” He made a face. I explained my mistake, showed him the ticket, thinking, maybe at least it will be a good lesson for him. He could tell I felt bad, not just about the money, but about being so foolish. He patted my arm, rubbed my back, and said, “Don’t worry, Mom. Just think of it as tuition.” Tuition. Some souvenir.