Friends and Spoons

At school I usually eat lunch in the cafeteria. When selecting that just perfect place to sit I usually opt for somewhere as close as I can get to another English teacher/speaker. Today I turned from the lunch line to see my co-teacher sit at the end of the table, with the nurse lady beside her and a PE teacher across from the nurse. I stood for a minute, perplexed. The PE teacher is a little scary, very intimidating, and resembles some sort of military officer...maybe the boot camp kind that yells at people all the time.

Seeing my confusion, he looked at me, glared, whacked table on the spot beside him, and said, "Sit."

I sat.

He said, "My friend", pointing at me.

I nodded.

Later in the afternoon I stole upstairs to the music room for a bit of peace and quiet. It was still lunch time but the students were in their classrooms watching a movie so I figured I wouldn't be disturbed.

I was wrong. A student wandered in, a third grader who is not my student, but seems nice enough. I stopped briefly to chat with him. This was his story:

Me: How are you?
Hwang Gyu: Very bad.
Me: Why?
HG: Head, hurt.
Me: Do you have a headache?
HG: No.
Me: Well what happened?
HG: Teacher, hit. Father.
Me: Your father hit you? Why?
HG: Teacher, father and me, fight. Hit head with spoon. Whack! (claps hands together and makes appropriate noises)

He promptly showed me the spot where he was hit and wandered off again. When I saw him later and asked if he had had lunch he said, " No. Head hurt."