A Soppy, Sad, Sniffling Sayonara

The entire staff shuffles into a sterile-bland conference room. Voices are buzzing. Shoes are discarded carefully at the door and communal plain, brown, mock-leather slippers are donned at once as we all balance awkwardly on the fake grass mat taking off our shoes. All our feet automatically match. Two long tables stretch down the room dividing the room into four aisles. An unattractive forest painting hangs in the left hand corner at the front, idly placed there to cover up some of the barren, unwelcoming eggshell colored walls. About ten teachers sit in the front and the rest of us spread out, people skipping seats not wanting to disturb anyone else’s private sanctuary.

I ask the school nurse if it’s okay that I sit next to her. An elderly female teacher across breaks into a grin, “You speak Japanese very well, don’t you!” I smile the obligatory, “No, no, no. Not at all,” and the ceremony begins.

The ten teachers in the front of the room will be leaving the staff. Three have reached the mandatory retirement age of sixty and the rest have been reassigned to other schools by the board of education. Everyone sits poker-faced and inscrutable; their faces blank white boards of emotion. The vice principal rises, “Now I’ll introduce the teachers who are leaving.” Each teacher stands as he reads out their name, department and how long they have been teaching at the school. And then it is time for them to share some parting words; some deliver, but most award us blubbers and burbles.

A woman art teacher wobbles up. She has been sniffling throughout the other speeches. I am unsure whether it is a symptom of allergies or emotions. She begins her speech, talks about her happy day-to-day school memories and her lovely colleagues and then she starts to yelp. Her voice cracks and she pauses. Everyone holds his or her breath as we all partake in this hideously awkward silence. It is, undoubtedly, difficult to leave behind six years of one’s life but she seems to be taking it exceptionally hard. Her voice wavers and finally she finishes her words of farewell and gratitude and sits down.

Several other male teachers stand and give stoic, manly, brief speeches laden with testosterone. The other woman in the group slowly quavers to her feet, lays down her gift and flowers on her chair and begins to speak. She has barely gotten out two words before she erupts into a torrent of tears. She gasps through the rest of her speech, reminiscing about the kindness and unimaginable assistance that was bestowed on her day after day. She is the sort of Japanese woman who has a squeal of a voice that would send any dog immediately diving for cover, maladroit paws futilely scratching at the ears in an attempt to shield them. She has, no doubt, been trained since girlhood to raise her voice up to the highest, most feminine octave, which, while bringing warm smiles to the faces of the Japanese, unfortunately, makes my foreign ears quiver, cry black tears and bleed profusely all simultaneously.

I look over and see several male teachers dabbing their eyes with their handkerchiefs, which have, undoubtedly been brought for that reason, as it’s not yet hot enough to carry around a sweat-rag. My eyes grow even wider as she continues to whimper, thus causing the entire room to echo her sentiments. I look for an escape route; a room full of sobbing adults, male and female, tends to make me ill at ease and downright twitchy.

Worrying that the room is going to flood and that perhaps, I should be outside building an sturdy ark out of bamboo, I relax when I see that there are no more women endowed with high-frequency vocal chords in the lineup. I sit back to listen to the remaining speeches, relieved that the awkwardness of watching grownups cry on command has passed. One of the tallest male teachers stands up. He has taught computers here over the past five years. My interactions with him have been limited to smiles on my part and deep, sweeping, courteous bows on his. The minute he stands up, I realize I have been mistaken. He immediately wells up and can barely speak. He seems more torn up than the two women. Eventually he composes himself, superglues his heart back together tenuously and manages to get through his spiel.

The teachers will repeat this performance later in the day. The computer teacher is not yet all cried out and his eyes become big, glassy, sopping wet orbs once again when saying goodbye to the students.

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Published:
4.8.08 / 1pm
Category:
amusing incidents, what i call life, culture