Splash

I'm a teacher.
I know what you're thinking, but, swear down, when I put my mind to it I can be a grown up, reliable, trustworthy, mature person. Proper role model material. To the point that people trust me to educate their kids.
So ner, ner, ne, ner, ner.
In. Your. Face.

Anyway, as part of my teacherly duties, a Parent's Evening swings by every once in a while that I have to prepare for. This usually involves the faffing about with of certain documentation (sponsored by numerous late nights), the picking of an outfit (sponsored by varying degrees of indecision about how much I look like Sandi Toksvig) and the throwing on of an affable nature and a hauntingly empty fake smile (sponsored by Disney).
By the time the event itself comes around, I'm ready to call everyone's bluff.

This week it was Parents Evening.


Night Number One
I prattled too much but beyond that people seemed to buy into the notion that I do know what is going on with their child. Job well done.

Night Number Two
Great. Until my first appointment.
Mum and Dad sat down. I spoke. At length. They did not speak. I spoke more. They stared back, looking ever so slightly horrified. I offered lots of niceties and platitudes and looked up to be greeted by their increasingly scrumpled expressions. They said not a word. Tough crowd. Wrap it up.

"Any questions?" I invited.
Without breaking their gaze with my face, both slowly shook their heads.
"Well if I could give you some targets to work on at home and if you could just sign...."
I slid a piece of paper across the desk at the exact moment a huge plop of blood fell from my face and splattered onto the line on which they were to sign. Ah.
This stain was immediately accompanied by a second splash of gore. I put my hands to my face, pulling them away to witness the horror of O+ butchery smeared about my reddened mitts.
Surely to God it was arterial? Turns out, having hosed myself down and fumigated my traumatised visitors, I had cracked the surface of a semi-healed cold sore beneath my nose; then over the subsequent ten minutes, my repeated jaw action had worked said crack open far enough to allow a pint of blood to pass out and at my stricken audience, via my face.
Which, as you may imagine, is not the look I was after.
The parents, still rigid with disgust, signed beside the blood splash, which had now seeped through the paper and met with the desk beneath (this was discovered has Mum lifted the paper and for a second contemplated putting it in her pocket).
They walked away, without shaking my hand, muttered and held the document at arms length.

That was my first appointment of the evening.
I had to then complete all of the following meetings holding my nasal crack together and explaining to each and every parent as they took a seat (some of whom I have never met before) the bloodbath that had gone before
.
And word to the wise; herpes is not the congenial conversation starter you may imagine.
Though infinitely preferable to a seeping haemorrhage.