Slightly winded from the three flights of stairs taken two at a time, I entered JLS where I teach. The director quickly informed me that my desk had moved, since – now that you mention it – the entire teachers’ room had moved. It’s now located near the front of the school where the books used to be sold behind glass doors.
A couple minutes after the director left the room, Daniel began relating all the lameness of the change. “For one thing, the kids can see right in. And now they can see you.” He eyeballed the staff at the front desk. “Internet doesn’t work right now. No LPT. No PowerPoint for class. No Facebook.”
Hmm, no blogging at work, I thought. I guess I’ll start prepping for my class then. The new room didn’t feel too hospitable, but I figured I’d make the best of it. I arrived late anyway.
“Wait, where are my books?” I asked out loud. Last I’d seen them, they sat neatly piled and topped with my name tag and Nerf gun in the teachers’ room, the old teachers’ room.
I got up and began looking through all the new cabinets. Then the new drawers. Nothing.
“You should ask someone,” Daniel said. I asked the director. She didn’t know. She asked around: the staff at the front desk, a few teachers, her husband. She and her husband, the owner of the place, discussed the missing books in Korean. After a pause, they both headed into the new teachers’ room to check all the cabinets and drawers.
I told them I already checked there, but they rechecked anyway. Nothing.
That’s when they began asking me questions. I told them I’d left the books on the built-in desk in the old teachers’ room, right next to “that chopper,” that chopper being the paper cutting chop-block I liked to play with.
That chopper moved. It rested comfortably in the new teachers’ room. But my books. . .
The director finally said, “I think they were thrown in the rubbish.”
