Classroom Co-incidences!

Recalled so far three different strange co-incidences that happened during my teaching days. Not that any of them actually means anything, but they were interesting at the time:

STORY ONE

A new year, a new school, a new class, and two teenage girls, best friends, rock into the classroom both wearing gold eyeshadow with a strange orangey-brown shade in the eye-crease. "You aren't allowed to wear make-up to school." I tell them.

They both sigh, look bored and each pulls out a laminated "letter from home", which said that they weren't wearing make-up; that their eyelids came like this naturally. Bizarre, huh! Didn't actually believe it but, as a teacher, you can't argue with "letter from mum" so I had to let it pass.

I should point out that it wasn't "Vegas Showgirl" eye make-up, but rather something much more discrete and tasteful, even kinda attractive, and they once even pointed out to me that I had the same browny-orangey pigmentation in the crease of my eye, only not so dark and noticeable, and which I hadn't actually noticed before.

I took it up with their mothers on Parent Teacher Night. "It is mind-boggling to me that two kids in the same class have the same weird eyelid colour. Is there any chance you two are related?" I asked.

Negative! And I must say they didn't look remotely like each other, and neither did either of them have gold eyelids, although they both had the weird orangey-brown pigmentation.

However, apparently my question got them thinking so together they rocked down to The Family History Archives to check the records, and, yes, these two mothers were related to each other and, what's more, they were both related to ME!

STORY TWO

Another class. Twins. Yvonne and Evette; known to all as Von and Vet! Definitely not identical because one was a girly-girl blue-eyed blond and the other was all mega-butch, dark-haired, dark-eyed and manly, but I always got them mixed up because, back when I was at boarding school in Australia, there were twins Von and Vet in my class and they too were this strange yin-yang, femme-butch combo, only their names were the other way around.

Three years of teaching this Von and Vet pair and, when they were graduating, I finally said to them "I'd really like to apologise for always mixing you two up. I knew a Von and Vet when I was a kid and the names were the other way around."

"Yes, we know." said Von and Vet. "Von and Vet are our aunties. They said they knew you."

STORY THREE

In one class of 24 kids, apart from Peter, Paul and Mary, and an Adam and Eve, every other kid was named after a colour. Honestly! It blew me away. Bloody hippy parents! There were two girls called Skye and an Azure and a Cerise, a Magenta, Scarlett, Sienna, Saffron, Rose, Rosa, Rosie, a Thai girl called Pinky, etc etc, and boys with first names like Browne, Gray, Greene, Indigo, and the least odd being names like Duncan (which also means brown) and Russell (which means red).

And - shhhh! secret - it used to give me endless pleasure organising them for group activities; same shades of the same colour or clashing colours or making them into rainbows. And, yes, you're right, I was by that time becoming bloody bored with teaching!


Actually, I'm already thinking of other strange classroom co-incidences, but I'll save them for some other time.