Losing my cool

I can be very patient with kids but I have zero tolerance with adults without manners. The following account happened last Thursday and is in no way embellished. It was also one of my most embarrassing moments. One way to exorcise my own ghost is to talk about it, so here I am. I have to say though that Czechs are generally polite and friendly. After all, I am married to one. This post is not intended for the readers to have a generalized view of how the people here are.

Prelude to Thursday.
We share the school building with a Czech preschool. We also share the huge playground behind it and mostly kids from both schools have the same playtime in the garden. It's a common knowledge that they are fond of toilets as dictated by their overactive bladders so there's one outside that all of them can use. There's also a huge shower smack right in the middle of the garden that kids can use in spring and summer.

Scene 1, Mid Spring 2006.
My co-teacher and I were sitting on the grass enjoying a beautiful sunny day while our kids were frolicking in the shower just a few steps from where we were sitting when suddenly one teacher from the Czech school passed right by us and unceremoniously herded our half-naked pack out of the tiles. She then told her kids to hop into the shower while ours stood bewildered on the side. J, my co-teacher, and I felt utterly stunned by the blatant rudeness but a few seconds later J snapped back to earth and tried to confront her in his broken Czech. He was completely, absolutely, rudely ignored.

Scene 2, Late Spring-Early Summer 2006.
One day we found the outside toilet locked and we still didn’t have a key. Our headteacher had to seek the same angst-ridden teacher to ask why it was locked. Her reason: because our kids only made a mess inside, e.g. didn’t flush it, made the floor wet, etc. Our point: it wont take up all her time to tell us to remind our kids their toilet manners, right?

Anyway, the outside toilet again made headlines when they didn’t want us to use it for a week during our school’s summer camp. Their reason: Nobody would clean it because they wont be there. Did I say we’re talking about 40-something women here?

The day I threw away my Ms. Congeniality crown.
Thursday was a freezing day. Winter has arrived very early. We were outside around 11am for less than ten minutes when one kid asked me to go to the toilet with him. I was standing by the door laughing with him because the toilet cover kept falling down when from the corner of my eye I saw the same teacher marching towards me, screaming with all her might at me. Yes, screaming at me as if I had done a terrible crime. She was livid, screaming smack into my face in Czech about the toilet not having water.

Honey, first of all I didn’t know about that. Second, nobody has the right to scream at me. With these in mind I screamed back at her. "Stop screaming at me!. Don’t you dare scream at me! If you have a problem, talk to our headteacher!" She went on in her rat-ta-tat Czech anyway so I marched away from her to S, our headteacher, who was talking to my other co- teachers several meters away. By this time I was furious at having been screamed at for no apparent reason at all. I yelled at S, "This woman is screaming at me! I don’t know what her problem is! Get her!" I marched back to the toilet to get the kid but he was already running back to play with his friends. Still raging from the woman’s rudeness, I ran back to where she was screaming also at S. S walked out of the whole scene since it was useless trying to put sense into the demented woman's head. The woman went stamping towards the other direction but this time, I had no intention of letting her get away from it all.

Picture this: she’s around 5'9" and I’m a midget next to her in my 5'2" height. She was already a few steps away when I yelled at her and was half-running to catch up with her. " Hey, I am not done with you yet!" When I finally caught up with her I went wagging my gloved forefinger up to her nose and screamed at her for all I care. " You are very rude! And you call yourself a teacher? Next time you should teach yourself some manners first!!!" Having said my piece, I stamped back to where my stupefied co-teachers were standing. I was always the Ms. Congeniality among us and to see me absolutely lose my cool was a shock to them.

When the raging inside of me died down, I regretted screaming back at her infront of a kid. The only consolation I had was the rest of the kids were too busy playing and running around to notice what was going on. It was also embarrassing in the sense that people I work with learned in such a way that I wasn't as laid-back as they thought I was. But I don’t regret fighting back. Sometimes you just have to or people will step on you.

I don’t know if this teacher understood a word of what I said. One thing for sure, I know she got the message. Nobody is going to let her get away with anything next time. Not me. Not anymore.