Tragic Tales from the Teachers' Lounge

August 23, 2010

Some teachers are pretty decent cooks. These are the ones I hope show up on the first Friday of each month, when the East High staff has a potluck lunch. Whatever they bring on these Fridays,—from Julie’s crack bars to Andrea’s cheesecakes, Laurie’s salsas to Chica’s strawberry cake—their offerings automatically up the “Cheetos” ante tenfold, and the rest of us benefit immediately.

Still, I’d be lying if I said teachers weren’t the most cold-blooded, undiscerning bunch of vultures I have ever met.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that, if I cleaned out my refrigerator tonight and took to school that moldy pile of who-knows-what that’s been festering in back for the past three months, I could get rid of it within 20 minutes--regardless of if it’s become low-grade penicillin. How? Simply by plopping on a “Free” sticky note and running. Believe me when I say that the teachers’ lounge is a dark, dark place, despite all the lights.

Take today, for instance. A perfect chocolate cake greeted us as we filed into the lounge with our lunch bags. Every one of us noticed that cake just sitting there, unattached and irresistible. So how low are our standards? How desperate are we, simply because something is available? Well, this thing could have been made of sawdust and vomit, but because it had a thin layer of chocolate on it, to us, it was Eve in the garden, that siren calling us to our rocky deaths. And we? We were helpless under its powers, eventually convincing ourselves that this treat was brought here for US. To eat. Right now. With our hands, if necessary.

I am not proud of this seamy side of the otherwise noble tradition of teaching, even if I am first in line to practice it. I still cringe when I recall a long-ago journalism conference in which one of my colleagues belittled a kid who’d snuck into the advisers’ lounge and stolen a donut. “Those are for US, you idiot! PUT THAT BACK NOW!”

Teachers, who would rather poke their eyes with a sharpened #2 pencil than attend another meeting, will joyfully jump through your hoops if you just throw them a dried up Lorna Doone or two before knocking off another agenda items. As a profession, we are the ultimate cheap dates, all dolled up in our practical, khaki capris and cardigan sweaters. Deep down, we know this about ourselves, and yet, we still can’t resist. In this one area, we are anything but discerning. But a contented bunch, nonetheless.