teacher's pets

It's fun being a primary school teacher. Things happen that just wouldn't occur in a high school classroom. Last year I had a kid in my class who'd massage my elbow skin when I was sitting next to her. This year although I haven't had to haul anyone out of class by lifting them under the armpits during a temper tantrum -- there are a FEW differences between kindergarden and grade five, you know -- I still get to enjoy the benefits of teaching kids who aren't all coolier-than-thou high schoolers.

This past term I devised a complicated rewards system. If the kids exhibited good behaviour in class, I'd write it up on the board ('Everyone finished their homework') and put a happy face beside it. If someone was naughty, I'd write that up on the board ('Nosepicking') and put a grumpy face beside it. Each day, the kids would tally up the total number of happy faces, then minus off the grumpy faces to come up with their daily score. The daily scores would be added up and then at the end of the week, the kids would figure out their total weekly score. For each point they earned, they'd be allowed to make one new link in a paper chain that hung across the front of our classroom. Then (I told you this was complicated!), if they got one line of chain strung right across the room, the class was eligible for a small prize like a gold fish. If they got two chains across, they could get a bigger prize, like a hamster.

Well, my classes both went for hamsters. The grade fives made it across the room first and so I had to follow up on my promise and go get the hamster. I dragged Phet and Ji to the Weekend Market and into the pet section. Fortunately, I went pet shopping before I got paranoid about the bird flu, so I wasn't worried about the parakeets and such. But even without that fear, I found the pet market NUTS. There are about eight hundred gazillion different kinds of animals for sale, plus a massive congestion of food stalls jammed among the cages and aquariums. There are scorpions and poisonous snakes, baby turtles and spiky Chinese turtles, goldfish and arrowana fish (the kind Chinese restaurants keep for good luck), hedgehogs, baby bunnies, big bunnies, mice, frogs, lizards of all shapes and sizes, parrots, worms (that are used as fish food) in vast water-filled buckets, song birds, squirrels, flying squirrels, tarantulas, and eels. There are surprisingly few cat-sellers, but many puppy dog breeders. The puppy dogs are often kept in a wide, flat box in a muddle of fluff and cuteness. The puppy sellers seem to usually sell one litter at a time, and they make their wares unbearable cute by picking up each puppy in turn, sprucing up its fur and grooming it, and dusting it with baby powder to make it smell good. It is absolutely impossible to resist the urge to go pat the baby puppies when they are this sweet.

Phet hates the Weekend Market even on a good day, and he was not especially impressed to be having to squeeze between fruit carts and jostlers in a sweaty hunt for a small rodent. Still, he's a trouper, and followed me practically to the end of the pet section where we finally found a good hamster shop. I picked out a big wire cage with a plastic bottom which I thought would be easier to clean and cooler than a fully plastic cage and we got some wood chips, food, and sand. Hamsters clean themselves in sand, did you know that? I didn't. Anyways, we dragged all of this stuff and the squeaking hamster out of the market and went up the huge flight of stairs to the skytrain, only to be told by the skytrain guard that animals weren't allowed on the trains. Since it was my bright idea to get the hamster and to take public transit, I couldn't complain, and quickly and cheerfully came up with a plan. Phet and Ji would take the cage on the skytrain, and I'd sneak the hamster into the underground subway which has a stop right next to the skytrain stop at the market. Then I spent the entire ride being totally anxiety ridden that either I'd be found out by the train police or that the hamster would suffocate. Of course, I'd carefully placed the hamster's box so it could get plenty of air, but I was still worried. Then, when I made it to the end of the line safely I was like "Take THAT dumb public transit dummies! I win!"

The kids in my class thought the hamster was great. They were well behaved with it while I was in class, but I heard reports from the other teachers who said that the students would jump up and run to the back of the room and inspect the cage every time the hamster made a peep. We had a heap of fun, though, naming the hamster. I let the kids write down as many names as they liked and stuff the names in a box, and at the end of the week I wrote them all up on the board and had the kids vote on them. My personal favourite was "Evil Master" but in the end, the kids all voted for "Ji Ham". So Ji Ham it was. Now, by the end of the term my other class had gotten their two chains also, and they were allowed to get a hamster too. I was flying to Canada that week, though, so I gave the purchase order to one of the kids and had him go to the Weekend Market. When I got back, I discovered that he'd bought not one but TWO cute little black hamsters and the class had named them Mickey and Miney. Yes, Miney. Not Minnie. But pronounced the same as Minnie.

Cut to the end of term. Three hamsters, two cages, and NOONE's parents wanted to host the hamsters for the holidays. So goodie gumdrops, we got Ji Ham, Mickey and Miney. Things mostly went alright until Ji was playing with Ji Ham one day and left the cage open. I sort of thought that Ji Ham was unusually quiet, but I didn't notice his absence until the next day when I went ballistic. Phet had put the hamsters into the kitchen the night before and I asked him sharply whether he'd left the cage open. He wasn't impressed with my tone of voice and got mad while I freaked out about the missing hamster. I suddenly remembered how the night before I'd seen 'mouse' poop in the bathroom - which I had thought was really weird since we've never had mice in the apartment - and also how I'd heard some funny scratching in the middle of the night. It all made sense now. Ji Ham was on the loose. The question was whether or not he'd made a complete escape or had achieved only a brief moment of freedom. I hunted throughout the apartment, checking out the most obvious spots. Strangely enough, Ji Ham didn't turn up under the couches, in Ji's toys, or nibbling on a computer cord. Instead, I found him tucked in a corner behind the curtains in the living room. He had somehow found the box of hamster food and had transported AT LEAST a cup of nuts from the kitchen to his hiding spot about 10 metres away. He was all, "Wasn't me!" when I scolded him and flung him into his cage without his stash. I was all, "How dare you cause marital discord in my otherwise perfect life, you damn wheel-runner?"

Without further incident (other than having copious amounts of wood chips skittered across our floors on a daily basis) the christmas holidays passed, and I took the hamsters back into school on Friday. The kids cheered their arrival happily and I have now washed my hands of them. I think when the summer rolls around the hamsters may be rewarded with complete and unrestricted freedom to run wild.

[Bangkok-08-January-2006]