The First Day

Welcome back to kindergarten

(Audio above recorded at the live show in Jerez.)

I still have to teach to pay the rent, and here in Andalusia that means teaching English as a Foreign Language to different age groups, among them five- and six-year-olds, an age group I had no experience with and even less interest in when I first moved to Spain. Today, it’s one of my favorite classes. I learn a lot about human nature from them, and they can be quite funny without even meaning to be. You just have to accept that at any given moment, there is going to be a certain amount of chaos. I did not know this—I’d been teaching university students, who are just as likely to go back to sleep when they get to class—but I learned.

I still remember the first day. I had my lesson plan ready, all the materials in order, everything set up, and about ten minutes before go-time they started arriving, their moms and dads leading them to the classroom door. While I was meeting and greeting them at the door—Hello! My name’s Charlie! Welcome to English!—I just assumed that, behind me, they were going to their desks, sitting down, waiting patiently to get started, but when I finally turned around…um, no. A couple of students had gone to desks in the far corner, but the rest were just all over the place, getting into things. My things. One child was at the board sniffing the board marker, another was at my desk checking the action of the stapler, another was doing some kind of gymnastics maneuver in the middle of the floor. Before I could do anything about any any of this, I felt a tugging at the corner of my shirt. I looked down to find a child looking up at me, asking a question I would learn to dread: ¿Ahora qué hago? ¿Ahora qué hago? (What do I do now? What do I do now?) And now another child was tugging at the other corner of my shirt, asking the other question I would learn to dread: ¿Cuánto queda? ¿Cuánto queda? (How much time is left? How much time is left?) At this point class hadn’t even started yet, and I had the same two questions. How much time was left? What did I do now?

I thought maybe I’d get back to meeting and greeting, that was something I knew how to do, but when I turned to the door I could see a boy clinging to his mom’s calves and sobbing. No quiero, no quiero. (I don’t want to, I don’t want to.) The mother was looking at me for help, some kind of direction, and I definitely did not know what to do about that.

So it was just all these different needs, and at some point as I was wondering what to do about all these different needs, where to even start, I caught whiff of a higher order of need, one of the highest orders of need—a need that should have been taken care of earlier and elsewhere, but had not been. Now, it’s not that university students don’t have these kinds of incidents. We all do. But when a university student has this kind of incident, it happens on their time, as they’re walking across campus after too big a helping of meatloaf at the school cafeteria. When a university student has this sort of incident, it’s their problem.

This was different. This was my problem. My classroom, my problem. What was the protocol? Did I make a big show of explaining where the bathroom was, in case SOMEBODY over in THIS AREA needed to use it? Or did I (literally) sniff out the affected party, take them by the hand and lead them to the bathroom? (This is before I understood that you do not, under any circumstances, want to take these creatures by the hand. Those hands, I have learned, will venture into all sorts of netherly nooks and crannies in idle moments. Say what you will about covid, but I am eternally grateful to covid for normalizing the virtual high-five.) Of course, if I led the kid to the bathroom…what then? The thing that was supposed to have happened in the bathroom, had already happened. What now?

I did not know. No idea. In the end I did what my people do best when faced with an uncomfortable situation…I pretended like it was not happening. Everything was fine. Nothing to smell here, folks. But of course there was something to smell here, and because there was something to smell here, I started breathing through my mouth, Darth-Vader style, which did not help alleviate any ambient anxiety and apprehension, least of all that of the kid clinging to his mom outside the door.

So there I was, breathing through my mouth, making as if everything smelled of roses, avoiding the far sector of the room, feeling like I was trapped in a live-action Tik Tok feed—What do I do now? How much time is left? I don’t want to! What do I do now? How much time is left? I don’t want to!—when this little girl strutted in and just kind of cut through the chaos. A little girl shorter than a goose, but with more attitude than a goose. She marched in with all the confidence in the world, went straight to a desk—over in the zone of impact, she didn’t know—dropped her book bag to the floor, planted herself in the chair, crossed her arms, and took stock.

Taking stock, it was only a question of time before this girl noticed what I was desperately pretending not to notice. When she did, her expression abruptly soured. Her nose wrinkled up, her eyes narrowed, and she said:

Jo, qué peste. ¿Quién se ha cagado?

Which is to say: Something stinks. Who crapped their pants?

And that, friends, is how I met Gema, a little girl with a whole lot to teach me. In short order Gema would become my unwitting cultural ambassador to Andalusia. She was Andalusia distilled. First of all, that frankness. Who crapped their pants? There is a kind of directness here in Andalusia which is just worlds away from the way I was raised. When I teach my new students to answer the question, How are you? with, Fine, thank you, and you?, that’s not just some formality, to give them something to practice. That’s what we say. We’re always, Fine thank you, and you? I might be in the middle of passing a kidney stone, and you ask me, How are you?, and I’ll say, Fine, thank you, and you?

But if you ask an Andalusian, How are you?, by God, they’ll tell you. You’ll hear about hemorrhoid flare-ups, bunion treatments, urinary tract infections, bloodwork. If you are worried about the state of your Spanish, say you wish your Spanish were more advanced than it is, take heart. You may not actually want to know what people around here are saying to you.

It takes some getting used to, but it may be a better way for society to operate. In point of fact, when Gema asked, ¿Quién se ha cagado?...if you want to know how the story ends…when Gema said, Who crapped their pants?, the boy seated next to her promptly raised his hand and said, ME!

And that, my friends, is how I met Nacho, Gema’s classmate and sometime rival. Nacho was still learning the ins and outs of digestion—i.e., where he needed to be when what had gone in was ready to come out—so he would have these accidents from time to time, but he wasn’t ashamed of them. It was like he thought maybe nobody would notice, or if they did, wouldn’t care. I’m okay with this if y’all are. If somebody did notice and call attention to it, he would admit to the problem straight away, i.e., Yes, sorry, that was me, my bad. In this case, after Gema asked who’d crapped their pants and Nacho said ME!, now we could develop a plan of action, which was for me to take Nacho to the director’s office, and let the director deal with it.

All of which is to say, Gema’s frankness, however unseemly it might have seemed to the Victorian prude in me, led directly to a solution. Had she not set this in motion, I don’t know what would have happened, how that class would have ended. It’s possible that would have been not just my first day, but my last, and that, I think, would have been my loss.