The other day Jon and I did our Returned Peace Corps Volunteer duty by talking to Theo's class about our PC experience. We had to shake the dust off of our memories and dig around for some pictures. I even found a powerpoint I had made a few years ago- but we didn't use it as the class projector was broken- which was fine, made it more true to the spirit of our experience as there was no powerpoint back then. Hardly any internets at all.
We got a little sidetracked from our presentation when I mentioned that as a teacher in my school in the Caribbean I could have whipped my students if I had chosen to. I didn't. Not sure Theo's classmates believed me. But they explored every possible infraction a student could have been whipped for. Turned out to be much more interesting to them than stories of climbing trees for mangoes, toting water from the corner pipe, doing laundry by hand, lizards climbing around the roof, or even horses scratching their backs under our stilted house. Even tales of a Class 5 hurricane could not alter their dedication to the topic of whipping.
Eventually we closed off the questions, turned on some good old Soca music by the Antiguan band "The Burning Flames" and handed out some fruit from the local grocery, but that also grew near our house in Antigua. All in all, I thought it went fairly well.
At home that evening I asked Theo if we had embarassed him. He said no, after a pause, then said, "I suppose it could have been worse." I pushed it then and said, "Come on, you have to admit that maybe your parents are even a little bit cool." His response, "Maybe they are, but I would never admit that as I don't want that going down on the permanent record!" Too late Theo! Recorded. In the late winter of 2013, when Theo was 10, he admitted that there was a small chance that we might be the slightest bit cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment