Teacher Feature

Tonight was Meet the Teacher night. It's an annual thing that takes place in many schools, with the actual date being determined sort of like they determine Easter. With Easter it has something to do with how Sundays fall in relation to the Paschal full moon and the vernal equinox. Meet the Teacher night always falls on a night in October when it's pouring rain and I have my period. Fortunately my kids are teacher-pleasers, so nothing really exciting ever happens anyway (one kid in Eve's classroom was wandering around hiding behind random strangers and shooting people with some kind of dart gun). It's one of those pain-in-the-ass things that you just kind of have to do -- or hey. Maybe I don't. I work in the freaking school libary. I know all the teachers. Oh, but then Eve wouldn't get to show me her art and writing, that's not at all different from the art and writing she does at home. And then we wouldn't get to walk around looking at nineteen globes made from paper plates and toilet paper rolls, trying to remember/figure out which one is hers because she can't quite remember how she coloured it or find her name. Then the teacher confessed that every time the curtains get closed the paper plate globes fall off the toilet-paper-roll stands and we realized that the globes could all have been switched around and I thought we might still be there when school started again tomorrow morning. Then the teacher found Eve's globe. I love the teacher.

Angus's teacher is pregnant. Angus's teacher is always pregnant. In grade three he started the year with one teacher, the classes got shuffled, and we found out he was going to have another teacher, who I loved. He came home the first day he had her and said "she so nice! And she's pregnant!" I thought "fuck", because if she was pregnant enough for my oblivious son to notice, she had to be about to drop the kid. Sure enough, she was gone a month later and we had a third teacher before Thanksgiving, who fortunately was also wonderful. Last year he came home in October and said "guess what? Madame is pregnant." She lasted most of the year. A couple weeks after school started this year he came home and said "you won't believe it!" and I said "Don't tell me -- she's pregnant?" It's really annoying that these women can't schedule their reproductive needs more conveniently for me. Also, get this -- my friend, who used to teach at our school, mentioned that the second teacher's pregnancy might have been unplanned since she wasn't married. I said "huh? Then why do we call her Madame?" I still haven't gotten a satisfactory answer for that one. I mean, seriously -- what is this, 1940? It's not even a Catholic school! I'm doubly annoyed because I just realized that I meant to be annoyed by this all this time, and I've basically forgotten about it until now! What -- are we too lazy to say Mademoiselle? Is it some twisted morality thing? No, it can't be, because we called them all Madame before they were even pregnant -- oh, but maybe we suspected they were having sex!

Sorry. I've clearly looked at too much student art tonight. Angus drew a picture of himself in Toronto outside the Rogers Center, with the CN tower in the background. He had a Charlie Brown head with no nose.