Are You A Vandal?

School's back and I'm glad. My mother's a teacher and when the kiddies are in the classrooms I can safely assume that she will not be able to do a Surprise Visit™. But the trade-off is that she rings up nearly every night to give us a rundown of the days events in glorious detail. Every snotty-nosed kid, every whinging teacher, every bad egg sandwich from the canteen, we get to hear about it. Every line of dialogue is recounted, and in the same booming teacher voice in which it was originally delivered. Last week we got the story of Jane, who Mum caught graffiting her limbs with red pen.

"Excuse me, Miss Jane, are you a vandal?"

"Umm... what, Mrs Williams?"

"Are you a vandal?"

"Umm... no?"

"Well then why are you defacing your arm?"

Kid still looks baffled but drops the pen all the same.

"You wouldn't go scribbling over your bedroom wall like that, so why deface your own body? Now go over to the sink and wash it off!"

This is of course the adbridged version of what happened. She went into far greater detail on the phone. After the poor kid scrubbed up she subjected the whole class to a lengthy lecture about respecting property and being kind to yourself and other such rot. She's Oprah with a Teacher Voice, folks. Urgh.