Fridays are a light teaching day for me and it was a good thing today, since I was finalizing the Year 8 English exam, which I’d helped author and typed as well as writing/typing the Year 7 English exam. These exams are a huge deal – about 80% of the term grade, from what I can tell. They are 9-10 pages long and include comprehension, grammar, vocabulary and writing.
Since the eye exams were taking place in the office where I do my typing/copying, I got to observe. Kids would come in in pairs or groups of three. First, one would sit on the bench for a typical eye chart exam. Next would come a more detailed exam, for some kids. You know when the optometrist has you look through the machine and switches lenses, saying “Better? Worse?” It was like that, except that instead of a machine with a myriad of lens combinations, the nurse had two pairs of old, beat up glasses. I couldn’t tell if the lenses were just covered in fingerprints or spider-cracks, but I’m impressed that the kids could see through them.
She’d have the kids use both pairs of glasses, while testing which helped their vision most. She made notes on the results. The kids were then sent to the male nurse, who wore a headlamp that was strikingly similar to the one my mom used to use when doing fine work in her jewelry making. He appeared to be looking for disease in the eyes. He’d look in the eyes, pull the lids up and down while having the kids look left and right, up and down. He’d make notes and then send the kids on their way.
One of the teachers came in to make a few copies and do the obligatory match-making. My Samoan still stinks but I know enough to know that her greeting to him was along the lines of “So, how do ya like the old broad? She needs a boyfriend.” I interjected, in English, that I neither wanted nor needed a boyfriend, thank you very much, even though he was a very handsome man. While she made her copies, the joking continued, as he assured me that he didn’t have a girlfriend. I called him a liar, in Samoan, which got a laugh from even the kids in the room.
Did I mention that this kind of banter happens in front of the kids? Not the really raunchy stuff, but the “let’s find Nancy a boyfriend” humor isn’t restricted to adults only gatherings.
After the teacher finished her copies and kissed me goodbye, the male nurse continued telling me that he would be a good boyfriend for me. I dismissed him as too young. “How old are you?” he asked. “50? I’m 50, too.”
“No, I’m older.”
“60? I’m 60! We’re the same age!”
Actually, the guy was about 35. I wouldn’t have cared if he was born on the same day in the same year, however, since he ruined any chance of romance when he slapped a kid. Because the kid didn’t scoot forward on the bench fast enough. The boy seemed resigned and unsurprised.
The second boy he slapped took it in stride and they both laughed about it.
At about 9:30, some kids delivered morning breakfast (which comes before morning tea, which is served at 10:45). For the nurses it was “tea” which can be tea (rarely), koko Samoa or in this case, instant coffee that is so watered down and filled with milk it is a dirty white color. It is also filled with enough sugar to make your teeth ache. Along with the tea, the nurses received crackers with butter and cups of ramen.
I received 3 butter/cracker sandwiches and a mug of “tea”. Personally, I’ll take Samoan ‘tea’ over Starbucks any day.
There happened to be five kids in the room, lined up for their exams, when the breakfast arrived. I kept working, sipping as I went. The nurses stopped for 20 minutes for their food/tea while the kids sat on the floor silently, waiting.
The kids seemed to enjoy the deviation from routine that the eye exams afforded. I remember enjoying eye exams in school, too. You got out of class, the exams didn’t hurt and it was something different.
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