Dr Todd was a senior lecturer at a college in the South of England that trained teachers for both primary and secondary schools. One of his roles was therefore to visit students in schools as they underwent their teaching practice, with a view to assessing their progress. So that is what he was doing on a sunny morning in February at a primary school somewhere in West Sussex.
As was his usual practice, he slipped into a classroom after
the lesson had started, so that the young would-be teacher could get the class
settled down and start teaching before he appeared. She had told the class of
9-year-olds that a visit would take place that morning, so they showed only a
passing interest as he made his way to an empty chair at the side of the room.
The chair in question was next to the well-stocked classroom
aquarium – a reasonably large fish tank in which an assortment of guppies,
tetras, rainbowfish, and much more besides darted in and out of the caves and
sunken pirate ships that the children had artfully made and placed in the tank.
Fronds of weed moved to and fro in the stream of bubbles produced by the
aeration pump that hummed gently away.
Dr Todd removed his papers from his briefcase and, as he
searched for a pen with which to make his notes, placed the sheaf of notes on
top of the aquarium.
Or he would have done so had there been a top to the
aquarium. There was normally a perspex cover with airholes that fitted over the
top of the tank, but on this occasion the cover was propped against the wall.
The child who had the responsibility that day for feeding the fish had
forgotten to replace the cover, with the net result that Dr Todd’s papers were
now either floating on the surface of the tank or starting to sink towards the
bottom.
Not surprisingly, Dr Todd jumped up in alarm and did what he
could to rescue the situation. This meant plunging his hands under the surface
and grabbing hold of all the papers he could reach. He soon found that it was
impossible to do this without attracting quite a lot of attention from the
class of kids. For their part, their initial state of alarm at the sudden
splashing and cursing coming from the side of the room soon turned to
amusement. Any sight of an adult making a complete and utter fool of himself,
especially one who had such an air of authority about him but who was not in
any position of authority over them, was fair game for ribaldry, and that is
exactly what Dr Todd got.
Dr Todd’s quandary was that he had to salvage his papers and
at the same do as little as possible to attract attention to himself, while
also trying to ensure that the student teacher could get on with her job of
conducting the lesson that Dr Todd was there to observe.
He therefore decided that this emergency situation could
best be resolved by drying his papers on a nearby radiator, so he moved in that
direction while trying to assure the teacher that all was well. He therefore
took a large step backwards so that he could look in her direction while moving
towards the radiator.
That was the reason why he didn’t see the large wastepaper
basket that was positioned between the aquarium and the radiator. His right
foot went straight in and promptly got jammed at the bottom of it. He may not
have seen the wastepaper basket, but all the children on that side of the room
had seen it, and they had a ringside seat as Dr Todd’s foot went into it and
stayed there. This was slapstick comedy of a high order, and they responded
accordingly.
Dr Todd had no choice but to drop everything and use both
hands to extricate his foot from the wastepaper basket, which he eventually
managed to do. The peals of laughter from the kids showed no sign of abating,
despite the teacher’s attempts to make this happen. To be frank, she was hard
pressed not to join in.
With his foot free and his soggy papers gathered together,
Dr Todd realized that he had no choice but to beat a retreat. Any hope he may
have had of retaining his dignity had long since vanished, so he uttered a
quick apology to the teacher, opened the door, went through it and closed it
firmly behind him.
So did the children immediately calm down and concentrate on
their lesson, with a feeling of regret that the comedy show was over? Not
exactly. What they knew, and what Dr Todd did not but had presumably just
discovered, was that the door he had gone through was not the door to the
outside world but to the classroom’s walk-in store cupboard.
There was therefore a moment’s shocked silence, followed by
another burst of laughter. The teacher did her best to silence the class, as she
knew that embarrassing her assessor any further was not a good idea. Her main
worry was that Dr Todd would soon emerge from the cupboard and the laughter
would resume. Presumably that was also Dr Todd’s fear, because he simply did
not emerge from the cupboard.
Indeed, he did not reappear until the lesson was complete
and everyone had left the room. His emergence only took place when the coast
was clear and he could creep away unseen, his foray into comedy being a one-off
event that he had no intention of repeating.
© John Welford
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