The Last Straw

“It’s a part of the culture,” they tell me, all the while clucking and shaking their heads. “You must not let them in the library, they will just steal the books.” And they do, oh believe me, they do. They steal books by stuffing them under their shirts, in their pants, or tucking them in their folders and papers and bags as they shuffle hastily out in a cluster of 35 other learners. They are not only crafty, and I hate to admit this, but they are craftier than I am. They manage to steal the most ridiculous things without me noticing: photographs on the wall behind my desk, thumbtacks, pages out of magazines, plastic folders, every pen I own, pink and green chalk (which the girls use as makeup), their classmates’ belongings, and, of course, books. Not even good books, mind you, but some of the most complicated, boring looking, old and desiccated books that I can say I could honestly watch being tossed into a bonfire without blinking an eye. And I like books, I really do—but I wouldn’t pass up a s’more roasted on a fire fed by the 1937 edition of the “biology teacher’s desk reference manual.” Stealing books from the already miniscule and under resourced school library is wrong in so many ways, it’s true, but it’s when my personal things go missing that I become the most irritated. Now, I can deal with the occasional missing pen. I have painstakingly written my name, “Ms. Carmen,” on many of my belongings in a big black Sharpie marker I keep in my personal desk drawer. I wrap masking tape around my pens and write my name on that as well as the pen’s plastic casing and rubberized grip—all to no avail. They still take my pens. But pens are pens, I’ll live. Today, however, was the last straw. Today someone took my preparation file. Okay, okay, hold your appalled gasp and shudder of disgust until I explain the weight of this: My preparation file is something I must present to the principal once a week and it contains all my papers that I put a lot of effort into creating and organizing. It has plastic sheets in it holding a plethora of documents I photocopied myself onto nice pink paper as well as important papers such as class lists and my scheme of work. It was all in a giant black cardboard folder I was using as a barricade so that my learners wouldn’t cheat on the test they have this week. How could I miss that leaving the classroom, right? Oh, the craftiness! I actually had a teacher search the bags of my grade 10A class before I got a tip that it was a grade 9B learner who wandered in during a free period. The grade 9B’s denied taking it when confronted, but they have a project this week for another class that requires the type of folder that I’m missing—which means—I will figure out who took it when they turn in that project. And they will be cleaning my library for months to come, oh yes, we will become very good buddies, me and this preparation-folder-stealing-and-other-not-so-nice-adjectives 9th grader. The pink papers I eventually found crumpled in tiny balls in the trashcan outside the library, getting rid of the evidence that it was indeed MY file the obvious aim there. I was very, very, very upset and angry all day, satiated only by my assurance that I will, eventually, catch the culprit. I’m way past feeling sorry for this leaner who probably can’t afford to buy their own cardboard file; he or she could have asked a teacher for help, explained the situation, anything but take what didn’t belong to him or her. By the by, Robin Hood wasn’t so magnificent after all. (Although he never stole my preparation file, so I’ve got nothing against him personally.) “What gumption! What disrespect! How dare they steal my personal property!” I was thinking, stewing in a broth of fury as I slumped down behind my desk after break time. In a moment of paranoid frenzy I went to label more of my belongings with the words “MS. CARMEN’S”--only to find that the big black Sharpie marker was missing from my personal desk drawer.