Costa Rican Memoir #5

collegiometodista01
Originally uploaded by Randuwa.

Education as a career for me was really an afterthought -- or perhaps an accident based on incidents (random Quote #11). I originally studied to work in the church. And then I actually worked in a church! Oucha Magoucha, the experience did not affirm my beliefs or my talents at the time.

So I switched majors and rushed an elementary education degree as a second major...I may hold the record for hours of courses completed at Asbury College, but I eventually finished with 2 majors and one minor (and a foreign language! -- parle vous française? Neither do I! But I digress....)

And then, in an accidental way, I obtained my first teaching job at Colegio Metodista in Costa Rica. An acquaintance on campus, who had once worked there, heard about my desire to teach overseas, and then suggested that I contact Colegio Metodista to see if there were any openings. I called and was hired over the phone on a Tuesday. I notified my parents about this on the Thursday, and to the amazement of everyone concerned, was bound for Central America on an Eastern Airline flight a little over two weeks later!

As the plane descended toward the airport in Alejuela (entering the magnificent cavity of the central valley out of which most the people in Costa Rica live), I peered down upon a land dulled by drought (a seasonal thing), and stepped off of the flight on February 6, 1984 to the utterly expansive beauty of Costa Rica. At the school, my position included 3 units of 9th grade geography, 9th grade honors English, and 11th grade honors English Literature, (and later, a section of 10th grade regular English was added).

My students were mostly Costa Rican, but included a couple of "Estados Unidensiens", Chinese (from Hong Kong mostly), Canadians, and at least one kid from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama. They were quite fascinated by their young American teacher, and didn't always know what to do with me. At times they rallied around me, and at others they tried to use me for their adolescent sport.

One of the "sportive" moments I remember most vividly was the old "thumb tack on the chair" gag. A class of my 9th graders placed a couple of thumbtacks on my chair in the hopes of solicited an injured and thus hilarious response from me. But as it turned out, I wore my only pair of corduroy jeans to school that day. And after presenting my initial lesson and their writing assignment, I pulled out my chair to sit in it. The action of pulling the chair out vibrated the tacks into the central concave hollow of the seat. And so, when I sat upon them, they all embedded themselves into the triple fold of my jean's central back seam and the hollow of my ass crack. Therefore, I felt nothing.

Well, not exactly "nothing". I soon felt the awed and confused stares of my students and noticed the recriminating glances of conspirators whose perfect plan of attack has ended in inexplicable failure. What could they have been thinking? Does their teacher possessed an iron butt!? (I only wish!)--able to bend steel tacks with a single sit!?

I remember looking up and saying, "What." To which many shoulders shrugged and all resumed their attention upon their assignments. After class the son of a Canadian missionary (and no doubt the master-mind of this nefarious plot) approached me and tried to asked about the general health of my "behind". A line of questioning that quickly led to a complete confession.

Dieu d'éloge pour le velours côtelé