My kindergarten class is rarely capable of coloring their pictures nicely in the morning before class without dashing into the teachers' room to harass me with their drama. Usually the urgent matter at hand is spawned by one or more children's obsessive need to rat out their fellow classmates. As such, usually their very important, pressing complaints go something like this:
Student: “Teacher!”
Me: “Go finish coloring.”
Student: “Teacher! [Name of most-likely-innocent rattee] is Korean!”
Why, yes...aren't they all?
Me: “Go finish coloring.”
Student: “Teacher! [Rattee] is 똥!”
똥 (ddong) is most frequently translated into English by my Korean co-teachers as “dung,” which sounds almost the same, so I usually remember it means poop.
Usually my students are not calling someone dung, but are informing me that someone has said this word out loud. (As I'm sure many of you know, the topic of poop has been an almost infinite source of humor among children for generations, no matter where you go.)
So today when my students rushed into the teachers' lounge with that pained look of urgency and dire importance on their faces, I just assumed it was because someone, somewhere, dredged up the age-old humor trump card in Korean, the infamous word 똥.
Little did I know.
When I went in, there was a heap of oozing, glistening worms on the floor. Or at least that's what it looked like to me.
In fact, it was a pile of undigested ramen, freshly liberated from my student's gastric acids.
As if this weren't already gross enough, there was no easy recourse for us teachers. We had no kitty litter. No handy contraption to suck it up so that we wouldn't have to. Alas, all we had were what all mouths were wiped and all messes cleaned with: our trusty box of Kleenex tissues.
So, what did we do? We heaped a huge percentage of the box's contents on the kinderspew and picked it up by hand - no gloves - and dumped it in the nearby trash.
I have to say that I'm relieved I don't have children of my own heaving in my living room just yet. But by that time I trust I'll have made sure to have an ample stock of kitty litter saved.
Student: “Teacher!”
Me: “Go finish coloring.”
Student: “Teacher! [Name of most-likely-innocent rattee] is Korean!”
Why, yes...aren't they all?
Me: “Go finish coloring.”
Student: “Teacher! [Rattee] is 똥!”
똥 (ddong) is most frequently translated into English by my Korean co-teachers as “dung,” which sounds almost the same, so I usually remember it means poop.
Usually my students are not calling someone dung, but are informing me that someone has said this word out loud. (As I'm sure many of you know, the topic of poop has been an almost infinite source of humor among children for generations, no matter where you go.)
So today when my students rushed into the teachers' lounge with that pained look of urgency and dire importance on their faces, I just assumed it was because someone, somewhere, dredged up the age-old humor trump card in Korean, the infamous word 똥.
Little did I know.
When I went in, there was a heap of oozing, glistening worms on the floor. Or at least that's what it looked like to me.
In fact, it was a pile of undigested ramen, freshly liberated from my student's gastric acids.
As if this weren't already gross enough, there was no easy recourse for us teachers. We had no kitty litter. No handy contraption to suck it up so that we wouldn't have to. Alas, all we had were what all mouths were wiped and all messes cleaned with: our trusty box of Kleenex tissues.
So, what did we do? We heaped a huge percentage of the box's contents on the kinderspew and picked it up by hand - no gloves - and dumped it in the nearby trash.
I have to say that I'm relieved I don't have children of my own heaving in my living room just yet. But by that time I trust I'll have made sure to have an ample stock of kitty litter saved.
