Our last education lecture can only be described as a machinegun fire of awkward, uncomfortable and just generally unfunny jokes and comments. A couple times a week all 180 of us are locked into a claustrophobe’s nightmare, this horrific lecture theater with rows so tight that, come Hell or high water or the Apocalypse, once you’re in you’re in it until everyone else in your row decides to leave, and we are forced to listen to someone drone on and on for a little over an hour about how to deal with kids with problems*. Because apparently there are absolutely no healthy or “normal” children in the entire county.
*I probably shouldn’t say that they talk about “how to deal with kids with problems.” These lectures rarely offer useful solutions, and instead it’s more like an hour of simply being told that these problems exist. So rather than a lecture on “how to deal with kids with problems” it’s a lecture on “Kids have problems—deal with it.”
Anyway, this Thursday’s lecture was particularly awful. It was given by two people, one boring lady named Julia and one socially inept artard that I’m going to call Carla because I can’t be bothered to remember what her actual name was. And I’ve found that socially inept people tend to be named Carla—that is, of course, when they’re not named Samantha.
See, this bitch actually talked about having piles, which (based on the translation I received) are like hemorrhoids or perhaps some other form of unpleasant butt sore unique to the British. I mean, even I know not to talk of ass sores in polite company, and this is coming from someone who the other day, probably trying (misguidedly) to propose an interesting topic of conversation rather than trying to be malicious, mentioned to someone how their last name looked a bit like “to fart” in French. So for me of all people to think, “Wow, that person really crossed the boundaries of appropriateness,” that person must have the social skills of Rain Man.
I’ll tell you what it felt like. It felt like when you’re in a public restroom and the lady in the next stall over is chatting on her cell phone. You feel horribly violated, not only for your own sake but also for the sake of the poor bastard on the other end of the line who probably won’t realize that he’s being violated until the cell phone picks up the sound of the toilet flushing. And suddenly the cheerful/friendly/businesslike tone of the conversation descends into a feeling of, “Oh God….you weren’t….were you?”
That’s basically what this lecture was like. First we were chatting away about ADHD and how to shoot Ritalin into kids, and then Carla decides to pull the figurative toilet flush handle (by mentioning dealing with painful ass syndrome) and then we poor souls in the audience have that feeling of “Oh God…you didn’t just….? God, you did…”
What was really delightful about this whole lecture though was that whenever Carla/this bitch would make an awkward comment about colorectal issues that she should really bring up with her GP instead of with 180 trainee teachers, or whenever she would make a joke about something random that fell flat or whenever her endless stories got boring, she would then turn to Julia and say something like, “…isn’t that right, Julia?” or “am I right, Julia?”
And poor Julia, who clearly should be in the running for sainthood now, just had a look on her face, that weary and glazed look of a government employee that seems to say, “There is no fucking way I’m getting paid enough for this shit.”
So while I’m not entirely sure I learned anything new about ADHD or how to deal with kids bouncing off the walls, I have learned one thing: that from now on when I make an awkward or TMI comment I’m going follow up the awkward silence with, “…isn’t that right, Julia? Or “Julia knows what I’m talking about.”
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