The team building day

While I have very few memories of my primary school years (hardly any between 5 and 10 years of age and those I am starting to recollect are not pleasant) I have many of secondary school. I reckon not less traumatic, but there were some characters along the way that brightened those dark days and left me with some nicer memories too. (For context, I was about fifteen years old at that time)

One, perhaps the most memorable character, was my geography teacher Mister Thay.

He was a born storyteller and we would never know beforehand where the hour spent with him would take us. Interesting as the subject was Geography! Growing up in Indonesia and having travelled far and wide, he had many stories to tell. He was fair, very direct, chaotic, creative and had a great sense of humour.

Sitting front row with my friend, we had the best seats in the house. He would always sit while teaching, while playing with his keys.

He would usually start with the topic of the day, let’s say topography of the African continent. He would then, in the middle of an exploration of vegetation, make a connection to an experience he had, growing up in the Indonesian countryside. He would bring up grandma’s cooking. Describing the ingredients she used, his face would change expressions as if he was there again, for a brief moment, taste testing her freshly made sambal and grandma would be asking for her little boy’s approval, asking: “hot enough?”, which would come with just a firm nod and smile of his fiery red cheeks and lips. Coming back to reality, he would mention a tribe in Papua New Guinnea where they made a similar side dish that was still nowhere near his grandma’s creation. This would be followed, every single time, by a loud exclamation of “how did I get to this point?!“, “I digress!” or “who distracted me?!”

His classes ignited my, at that time, obsession for maps and topography.

One time, he told us a story of a teambuilding day he had with all teachers from the school. I cannot remember why he shared it with us, just that he clearly enjoyed talking about it and I am so glad he gave us this little peak behind the curtain. He described how these days made him feel as:

“I was bored out of my mind”

and later I came to realize that this sentence summarised my entire schooling, student-years and most of my job.

He told us about his partner-in-crime on those days and it was colleague Mrs.Shim . Now, at this moment, my friend, sitting next to me- and I looked at each other in total disbelief. Mrs. Shim was the physical education teacher, the Victorian sports lover with her spartan methods (see a few posts below for a few words about her) Her hair looked like a white, unused mop and she was thin as a stick. As I knew, in my attempts to avoid the P.E lessons I sat next to her often, she smelled of old attics and unwashed second hand clothes that were stored for a while. A possible friendship between her and our beloved Mr.Thay was as unlikely as anything.

She was Mr. Thay’s partner-in-crime?

He continued with his story about that day. Mr.Thay and Mrs.Shim were both bored out of their minds on the teambuilding day, while other colleagues seemed to obediently do what they were told: follow the planning of the day, participate in the activities in groups they were placed in. Now, these activities are often so generic, without taking experience, personal interests, nor individual preferences into account. Our bored duo, with both over two decades of experience under their belts, had no intention of wasting their time on making spider-diagrams all day. According to Mr.Thay, they always had ideas to beat the boredom.

Mr.Thay would go down to reception (it was always being held in a shabby yet large hotel) and make up a story for an emergency message to be broadcast through the intercom (apparently the hotel’s conference hall had such a system) The message could be: “Will the owner of a blue Ford Taunus, registration XP-14-LD come down immediately please, you are blocking the exit in the garage.“ The Ford Taunus being Mrs.Shim’s car. She would run down, knowing full well her car was not blocking any entrance.

In another instance, Mrs.Shim would have hotel staff tell a certain colleague there was a call from their vet’s office. Resulting in confusion, at times. He continued- Before the lunch buffet, they would replace shrimps with tiny pink marshmallows. They would put funny badges on instead of their names, ‘out-of-order’ signs on all lifts and ‘wet paint’ signs on the stairs. It beat the boring activities by far.

I listened to his story, breathless, laughing at times and all the while signaling to my friend, in disbelief, how this could be the same Mrs.Shi, our dreaded P.E teacher. Mr.Thay confirmed it was and calling her by her first name now made our confusion reach a climax.

I think of this still, till this day. Firstly, as we perceived teacher Shim as a Dictator with hair like a mop on a thin stick, an entity devoid of all emotion. This experience made her….. somehow….a bit more human. Someone with a pet perhaps, a love for fine wines, strolls on a Sunday morning? Reading detectives, gardening, playing scrabble, jazz music?

Although I had trouble believing that this same person could be so witty and fun to be around, with a mind of her own, hearing this made her a little human, no matter how much I detested her lessons. No matter how this alter-ego was hidden for us. I wish she would have showed that side more to us and wondered why she never did. But now I knew it existed inside her. Secondly, when I experienced team building days myself, later, when I was a teacher (albeit primary school, but same thing) I realised the ‘bored out of my mind’ scenario..I wish I could have had a partner-in-crime this funny, during my entire career.

In the last school I worked there was a colleague with a similar sense of humour and on such days, if we had the luck to be in the same group, while doing some pointless activity, (there might have been a point to it for some, but not for us) we would howl with laughter, while others would get irritated as we were not serious enough with the activities (those that bored you out of your mind) or uncomfortable, because they were too scared to stand out from the crowd and we reminded them of it.

Mr.Thay would have been a great asset on those days and now that I think of it, perhaps his style rubbed off on me: I tend to jump from one story to the other as well.

I could see him and Mrs.Shim, now a little bit more human, sitting on a bench in the shabby hotel lobby, chewing on marshmallows instead of shrimps, plotting their next prank, to get through the boring days. It reminds me of a time, a decade later, when a pupil, while I was teaching my own class, that one time, saw me eat instant noodle soup (they would usually only see me eat fruit and salads as it would be early in the day) He looked at me and said: ” Oh, I’m so happy to see you eat a warm meal for once!” Perhaps, for a brief moment there, he saw me as a little bit more human.

Dedicated to Mr.Thay, who made me see, early on, that learning never can, is not, nor should ever be boring.

❤️