OLKAN (English)

I had a friend named Olkan when I was in middle school. We shared the same desk for about two years. I was thinking, what is Olkan, what kind of a name is this; I never heard it before. He was not local to the area. I was thinking maybe in their neighborhood there are different names unlike ours. As our friendship progressed, I found out that his name was intended to be Volkan, but the registrar officer for his birth certificate omitted the “V” in his name and he happened to have his name as Olkan. I also did not have a friend named Volkan till then either’ it was hard to call him Volkan after all those times I called him Olkan. I asked him “Would you want me call you Volkan?”. He said “no, even my dad calls me Olkan now.” I was happy, he would continue to be Olkan, I didn’t have to make a change.

We had a nice friendship throughout the middle school. He taught me a lot, and I did same to him. When compared to me, he was more of a mischievous kind of a child. His lessons were not very good either. He used to teach me slang language; Olkan is the one who made me get used to cursing when I was a child. We used to study curse word pronunciation when we had break at school; I used to have so much hard time pronouncing curse words, I was not used to saying them. I started with very basic level, like “shoot, crap, bad man” even these were hard for me to say. Through the time I got used to it to a point that I was starting my each sentence “f.cking …..” when I was at the school. When I get to home I was becoming this calm and obedient Elvan. I did not curse even once outside the school somehow.

I have always been a good student in primary, secondary, middle school; even in high school. It was in such a way that a certificate of appreciation at the end of the semester was shame for me, I should have got merit certificate each time. Sometimes, I used to help Olkan study. I wasn’t a very smart student but I think I was above average. I never studied throughout my school life. If I put together all my study time together till I started college, all can equal to the time I studied for university entrance exam – if we actually call that “studying”. But anyways, while Olkan was teaching me “the real life” I was trying to explain him that he could be like me too. I don’t really know what it means “to be like me” really, cuz I was not really doing anything to be me. But, just like I needed to practice curse pronunciation in order to talk like him; he needed to struggle to get good grades or become an obedient boy. Throughout time we both changed. One day, I was climbing down the fire exit in school and I fell. I cursed immediately; when I lifted my head I saw my favorite teacher in the school. I wish I had not lifted my head. I wanted to curl up and die because of how ashamed I was. He did not say anything; he would never expect me to say anything close to this. He held my hand and helped me stand up. I walked to my class embarrassed. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Olkan asked me after the class: “What’s wrong with you? You are not talking at all.” I said, “I will not talk to you anymore, I have turned foul-mouthed kid because of you!” He said, “you have turned into a f.cking swearer; you cuss more than I do! But, you cannot stop talking to me because of that.” We made a deal: Neither of us would curse anymore; if we did our friendship would be over. I think that was one of the best things that our friendship gave him. Welcome to non-abusive world.

I think it was the second or last year in the middle school, end of the first semester. We had a new principal. For the first time in my life I was getting the highest grades in Math, 5 out of 5. We had a new Math teacher, Nilufer Kanburoglu. She hated her name being misspelled or pronounced incorrectly. That was the first thing she had thought us in the first lesson. Even now, I am paying full attention into writing her name correctly, feeling like she will come out of nowhere and yell at me.  Anyways, it was the end of the semester and our teacher was handing out report cards. She handed merits, then appreciation certificates first; she did not call my name. I was thinking something is wrong, my eyes were teary. I pulled my courage together, and asked my teacher: “Don’t I have a certificate?” in the middle of my sentence I tears roll down my cheeks. My teacher also looked surprised; how come I didn’t have a certificate. She looked at my report card and turned to me: “But you failed math sweetheart.” I can’t hold it anymore, I started crying loud. “How come!?” Teacher handed out the reports while trying to consult me. And I am trying to explain how I did good in the exams. She first tried to avoid dealing with it, thinking I might be wrong. Then she took me to the principal’s office. I explained that I got high grades on Math it is not possible for me to fail it. He laughed at me and said: “Sure it is like that.” Obviously he thought I was lying. As I kept insisting on it, he called our math teacher. She did not remember my grade but she was sure that I did not fail. The principal asked for permission to open her cabinet to check it in her notebook. After she approved they opened it and they brought in the notebook. They checked it, it turned out that I was telling the truth. An administrative mistake; they have entered numbers incorrectly while registering grades in central system. My school number was 1267, Olkan’s number was 1276. In the class list and in the teachers notebook, we were listed consecutively. So, they confused my math grade with Olkan, gave him my grade, his to me. Principal told me that they could not print a new report and a merit certificate immediately, but they would give me one sometime in second semester. (I still did not get it.) I was insisting that I could not show those reports to my family, they would be disappointed. He hand wrote my grade over and  initialed it, and said they would believe me. I was angry; thinking “they would not believe; this is exactly what Olkan does every semester before going home!” So I asked him, if you could call my dad and explain him what happened. He said “no.”

I told my dad what happened with tears in my eyes. He said, don’t worry buddy, such thing sometimes happens. (I translated this to Olkan’s talk in my mind: Sh.t happens.) Come and help me with this. The worst report card day passed like this.

Winter break was over and we were back at the school. We were talking with Olkan.

“How was your winter break?”

“It was fine.”

“You know what happened? I failed math, but somehow our teacher graded me with 5 and I passed. My parents were so happy.”

I smiled, did not say anything. Someone’s sorrow could be someone else’s happiness sometimes.

We don’t even have a photo with Olkan.. Oh well, at the time people did not carry their cameras in their pockets..