"Teacher!"

Saturday night shenanigans don't usually wind up with me having a good story to tell, but last night was pretty darn hilarious.

Sitting at this table, surrounded by bottles of alcohol, two girls and a slew of boys came to sit at the table beside us. It wasn't long before we noticed Girl #2 was completely passed out. Slouched over on her Family Mart stool, she looked even younger than the 21 years at which I had her pegged. Oh brother, right? Unfortunately, we see this all the time. It is certainly more rare for a young woman to be sloppy drunk, but the culture lends itself to allowing this, so it is bound to happen sometimes.

But that isn't the funny part. Clearly.

Girl #1, seemingly sober, gives me a look that can only be described as a mixture of elation, awe, and surprise. She interrupted us to ask,

"Teacher?! Keun Myung High School? Me. Three grade. oohhhhhh!"

"Um, did she just tell me she was my student from the third grade?" I asked my friends. They were certain that she had. Uh oh. She had just told on herself.

Realizing fairly quickly a) what she had done and b) that her friends could not care any less, she was stuck. What to do now? She quickly backpeddaled, hoping to assure me that her friend simply had a headache, and this would clearly explain why her head was resting firmly on the dirty, plastic table, mouth agape. Right? Makes sense to me.

She also endeavoured to assure me that she had not been drinking at all. This I happened to believe. Her male companions were just about as disrespectful as 20-year old boys tend to be. It really pissed me off that as she was digging her own grave in excuses to me, they were watching, unaffected, uncaring. Jackasses.

When her older brother appeared, it became clear that these were his friends. He smoked right in my face and really didn't care about his sister's plight, but I remained affected. I told her I should call her parents and tell them that her brother took her out drinking. She literally begged me not to tell her homeroom teacher about the incident. I assured her I would.

I think the funniest part of the whole situation was that this was what was in front of me as she did this entirely awkward dance of apology. They really do abide by the, "Do as I say, not as I do" philosophy here.



On a serious note, I think it's important to remember that even though everyone got quite a laugh out of the whole thing, and her night was effectively ruined, muddied with nightmares that I would be ringing her parents and homeroom teacher faster than she could scurry away, is that we are teachers here, first and foremost. We have a higher standard to uphold than an average employee in this country. After all, the children look to us for guidance, support, and an image of life to which they could aspire. They often see their teachers far more than they do their parents. Who else is supposed to help them through these perilous years?

My friends are middle and elementary school teachers: seeing this display just is not a reality for them. I think that is why they found my (over?)reaction so humourous. But for me, unfortunately, I see my little rugrats smoking, slutting around town in really inappropriate clothing, and drinking publicly at the tender age of 16. It's something I take seriously.

Yeah, I sound like a narc. I don't care.

I just love how innocent she was. She could have just ran away and avoided eye contact with me. That would have probably been the wiser move. Also, realistically, in a school of 1500 children, I can only pick out about 25 of them from a lineup simply because they stand out socially or linguistically enough for me to remember them, having only seen them once weekly. Will I remember this child? Realistically, no way.

Will she remember Saturday night?
I hope so :)