Eating out with teachers

One of the challenges of being a teacher, and going out with other teachers is to leave your teacher-ness at home when you all get together. Some days we’re more successful at that then others. Last night definitely had moments of teacher-ness in it. While out for Mexican food (Cinqo de mayo) a child was playing and throwing things in the restaurant (this is Turkey…children can do very little wrong). In and of itself this is not really a problem, however it turned into a small one when he threw his eraser and it flew by our table and landed under Molly’s chair. Enough! Shouldn’t parents be able to control their children better in public? When the child came over to start crawling under the table to retrieve his toy Molly put her foot on top of it and said no. Scared out of his mind, the child turned around and went back to his mother with a look of disbelief on his face. Molly retrieved what was thrown and we all looked at the culprit, an eraser. Of course. We can’t leave school behind. That would be too simple. The offending item lay on our table for an hour or so until the mother asked the waiter to retrieve it for her, we of course surprised her by understanding her request expressed in Turkish and Molly quickly looked up and said the child could come get it. Child comes reluctantly over and stands at the edge of the table while you can see both Molly and Kelly thinking rapidly. We all know that all we want is an apology/polite request for the return of the eraser. So while Molly looks to be getting closer to exploding, Kelly quickly chimes in “Pardon, silgi alabilir miyim?” giving the child an example of exactly what we expect. He got it wrong the first time, no “pardon” so a second attempt was necessary. And when that finally came out with a prompted “lutefen” on the end the eraser was handed over and we all breathed a sigh of relief before cracking up. You can take the teacher away from school but that doesn’t stop those teacher habits.