Oooooh, she’s got koodies! (May 2003)
As soon as the war started, more than in the classroom with my students, it was with my colleagues and in the teachers’ room that I perceived a poisoned atmosphere. They made little wise-cracks and I don’t know how they expected me to react, but when I replied in kind, they acted offended because I was offended! So one morning when a Canadian colleague of mine arrived at work and pointed her finger at me as soon as she saw me, saying, “Oooooo, she’s the American. She’s got koodies.” for several seconds I felt mortally wounded. I hadn’t heard that word since I was in elementary school, one of the many manifestations of the cruelty of children when they want to isolate and hurt the feeling of one person from the group. Having pronounced those words, my colleague had intuitively captured in three words exactly the way I felt in the school where I teach.
I had never spoken to her about politics, so I had no idea what her position was on the war, but it seemed hard for me to believe that she would make such a blatant effort to be injurious. However, since so many of my colleagues were going out of their way to go over the top in my direction, I remained in a state of panic and in doubt for several seconds. She asked me if I knew this expression “koodies” or if it was a Canadian thing and I told that we had them in the States, too, but that like the mumps and the measles, kids usually grew out of them before they reached high school. Then, she said, “I don’t even know what you think about the war. We’ve never spoken about it.” When I told her that I thought it was necessary considering the personality we were dealing with and the dangers that have become bluntly obvious following September 11th, not only did she confirm that she felt the same way as I did, but she said that she was very disappointed with the Canadian government for not having supported the United States in its endeavor in Iraq.
The tension thus gone as we were walking along the corridor, when we ran into an English colleague, the Canadian one said hello to her adding, “Here we are in the presence of the two allies!” The fact is, we have several British colleagues in our school, but they never get any of the ruffle I get. Being anti-American is in, but being anti-British certainly isn’t the fashion. However, by sparing the British the “blame” for the war, they’re not doing them any justice. On the contrary, they are committing an error of omission: Their young men and women are also risking their lives for the freedom of the Iraqi people and for that of all of us.
Sandra Giovanna Giacomazzi teaches Law and Economics at the Liceo Europeo Umberto I in Turin, Italy. She also writes for the Roman daily, L'Opinione della Libertà and was awarded the Mario Soldati Prize for Journalism and Criticism for 2002.
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