The Shower
“Ms. Seiler, here’s my homework.” It was Bessie, one of my 7th graders. She stood there with a folded piece of paper in her outstretched hand.
It was only the second day of my teaching career. It was 7:10 AM and I was taking a shower in the girl’s locker room because I had no running water at my house. The school and the laundromat were the only places in town with running water. Many of the teachers showered at school, but none of us ever expected to be doing so with our students.
Well, I quickly decided to wrap a towel around my naked self to avoid any more embarrassment. Bessie seemed to see nothing wrong with catching her teacher perform her morning bathing ritual. I, on the other hand, had never taken a class in college that covered this sort of situation.
As we stood there, Bessie expectantly waiting for me to take her assignment, and me looking only slightly less dumbfounded than if a pod of Martians had walked in, I quickly assessed the situation.
“Well, Bessie, I don’t have any pockets right now. Can you hang on to it until I collect them in class?”
“Sure, I guess,” she said as she began to undress for her own shower.
Faster than a 7th grade boy on his way to lunch, I whipped on my clothes and ran into the principal’s office. “Mr. Keith,” I panted, “we have a problem. A kid just walked in on me while I was in the shower!”
Mr. Keith looked nearly as dumbfounded as I felt. At first I didn’t think he believed me. Then to add insult to injury, he started to laugh out loud. I was incensed. This was my dignity he was mocking! With tears in his eyes, he asked me, “Was it a girl or a boy who walked in on you?”
Naturally, that caught me off guard. After I realized it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had seemed or could have been, I laughed with Mr. Keith. Once we caught our breath and wiped the tears from our eyes, we ran an announcement in the bulletin telling kids they should not expect to be let into the building before 7:30 each morning. The next year we changed it to 7:45 so that I could sleep a little later (school didn’t start till 9:00 AM).
Over the years, I’ve thought about Bessie and the things I learned in that village with no running water. Even though I may have become a bit more spoiled since then (I have a shower in my home now!), I can still roll with most of the punches thanks to Bessie and her classmates.
Much to my relief, Bessie never brought the incident up in class. Eventually I buried my dignity in the back yard, and Mr. Keith retired at the end of the following school year. Maybe a kid saw him naked in the shower too?
