Capers in the Classroom

”Imagine if there was a television comedy show, probably some obscure Eastern European one, where the plot each episode was for the gorgeous, curvy instructor to be stripped naked — often unknowingly — at the hands of the students in her course. A common location, cast of characters, repeating formula, and even catchphrases: This is the novelized version of what that improbable, hypothetical Embarrassed Naked Female show might look like. If only they still made television like that.”

The camera, if there were one, would find Professor Maria Vargas in the corridor first.

The Professor strode towards her class, room 202. Her heels clacked on the linoleum; her shoulders were set with confidence. She was a curvaceous latina in her prime and she knew it, educated and self-assured. Maria’s long dark hair was gathered in a bun, a few deliberate strands tastefully left loose at her temples. She wore a close gray zip sweater and a black miniskirt over dark stockings, the sweater’s zipper not quite as high as professional dress codes might prefer, leaving a hint of black lace visible in her neckline when she breathes. She did not adjust it. She had taught worse rooms than this in cheaper shoes. She found it rather beneficial as it helped to keep her students’ attention fixed on her, perhaps hoping in vain the zipper might shift a few more inches. It never does, of course, she thought to herself, that’d be unprofessional.

She reached the room. It was a comparatively small classroom on the second floor, with one wall lined with windows overlooking the parkinglot. Sunlight filtered into the classroom in a haze. The classroom had twenty-odd desks; hardly half of them occupied, but the whole class was already here. They’re early. A good sign. To be expected, perhaps, these students were all a bit older — the youngest nineteen or so and the older ones drifting into twenty-two and twenty-three — and she hoped age brought some added discipline. She herself was heading down the runway in the direction of thirty, and felt some classroom experience like this in a small town was a good way to pad her resume before applying to join a faculty and become a proper professor. Maria Vargas was here to teach a course of supplementary skills. A kind of elective which sat between the basics of high school and a proper degree, which included a hodgepodge of languages, history and science. It was a good initiative by the school, she thought. It helped propel students to better prospects, or allowed those who’d graduated a few years earlier and worked jobs in between to come back and refresh their skills before having a go at academia. A select few just missed the high school experience.

The room smelled of sunbaked PVC and chalk dust. The previous teacher’s handwriting still ghosted on the blackboard. “They’re attentive,” Maria recalled her predecessor saying, “but they’ll leave you bare-threaded. Don’t ask me how. Just- watch your zippers.” The woman, Miss Calloway, had looked… frazzled, her strawberry blonde hair falling in untidy rivulets out of the knot she’d halfheartedly tied it in. Maria thought she had the look of laundry accidentally left out in the rain. Before Maria could say much to interrogate Calloway’s peculiar warnings she’d left the office, clutching a cardboard box of teaching supplies. What on earth did that mean? Zippers? Was she trying to say these students were thieves? Maria almost laughed. Neither her sweater nor her skirt had any pockets to pilfer for valuables anyway. She’d just have to put her purse somewhere out of reach. The headmaster had told her these kids were troublemakers, but she’d accepted the appointment as a point of pride. She’d handled restless rooms before, she knew she could turn clay into marble. And these students, judging by a glance she took through the glass, looked collected and focused — not at all like the monkey circus the warnings had made her anticipate.

She stepped into the room. The students lifted their faces, eyes forward, pens out and phones down. Tsk, they cannot be as bad as all that, she thought. Professor Vargas set her purse on the desk, wiped Miss Calloway’s writings off the board, and wrote her name in a clean hand. “Good morning class, I’m Miss Maria Vargas, let’s introduce ourselves and begin with our first lesson together.”