It was the Friday before Carnival break, this last February, and on this day the school where I teach  permitted the kids to come in to classes out of uniform. As expected, there was a high tide of hoodies, tight jeans, expensive garish trainers and silly-looking headgear worn at self-conscious angles on the part of the boys whilst some of the girls accompanied their intentions with revealing outfits and precocious make-up that screamed of something Manga-like. In at least one of the schools I went to at around that age they used to call this rare privilege “being allowed to come in in mufti”. At Saint Julian’s I seem to remember we did this once a year for charity. I remember the excitement – the quiet anxiety, for some of us – of trying to get the moment right; that chance to exhibit ourselves adequately in front of our peers and all those girls we so wanted to impress. 

That Friday at work, however, I was genuinely surprised to see the number of boys and girls who had come in to school in disguises of one form or another. Yes, there was the expected range of kids fantasy outfits – footballers, boxers, gangsters, princesses, mermaids and so on – but there were a number of kids who I found had thought of very original disguises and concepts that in several cases required two or three of them to complete. Almost all of these went on later in the day to compete for the best disguise award for their year that went on after lunch in the theatre. They had clearly given their outfits some thought and it was fun to see them enjoying the moment with healthy abandon.

I had understood the day was theirs as I walked in to my first period at 11:00 to find 2D screaming and squealing in their form room. Instead of taking them back to the Art Room, as I would have done, I opted to keep them there and settled down behind the teacher’s desk, after trying a few words with them and an attempt at registration, to take the riot in. Bangles and jewellery and eye-liner in tight little skirts, in a state of hysterics, bounced from the walls to the tinny sound of music from various laptops. A banana asked me if she might draw whilst two playing cards, squeezing sideways between the desks, came up to ask me if they might be allowed to go down to the music room to rehearse. One of the footballers, in full Barcelona kit, was kicking a ball around with Karate Kid as the various hoodies sauntered about the room as casually as they could, dodging missiles of one form or another. Half of the class DESPERATELY needed to pee. All of them were yelling….at one and other or just for the sake of it; I don’t know. It took me a few minutes of banging the table and shouting them down to regain some form of control. They seemed indignant with me when I managed to make myself heard. They calmed down a little and I sat down to catch up on my emails and read the news. One of the girls came up to me to ask if they might use the projector to play some music. I agreed and got back to my correspondence. 

The girls quickly pushed back the desks at the front of the class and cleared a space where a phalanx of them began to dance in unison to the video being projected on the white board. All the boys had retreated to the back of the class and sat in a long line, their backs against the wall, immersed in their laptops in some game or other they were playing without paying the girls and their coquette little moves the slightest bit of attention. I looked at the lot of them, buried in their screens, and felt like saying “What are you doing? It’s all happening up front!” Of course in a year or so all of that will change. For now they couldn’t care less. I looked back at the girls and their moves and for a moment I observed them, letting my mind’s eye lose focus, and wondered what all these grown women were doing dancing as one in my class. Mariana suddenly turned to me and threw her arm in the air: “Mister!!! Can I go to the bathroom?” I almost felt my pupils contract as I nodded my consent and told her not to linger.