The 13th Graduation Ceremony

This is how sadistic our lives have become. Sabrina and I have agreed that whoever dies first that the other will have to play the Rocky Horror Picture Shows “Time Warp” at the the funeral. Since mid March Sab, myself and another teacher Fiona have been practicing the “Time Warp” with a mix of students from each of our classes.

Now the Time Warp is a pretty easy dance. Jump to the left, step to the right, hands on your hips, knees in tight. Pretty simple stuff...how wrong we were. Sab and I are convinced that western kids would be able to nail the dance at a quicker speed then our kids. For two months they killed us every morning and afternoon by jumping too early or turning the wrong way. Now the sympathizers our there would say “well they are only in kindergarten” but wait, a visit by a former Brazilian soccer player recently confirmed our theory when he clearly stated in the local paper that Hong Kong kids have no co-ordination at a young age as they are only concerned about school and don’t practice enough sports.

So every morning and afternoon we jumped to the left and stepped to the right. There were about 30 kids in this dance and as the days to graduation grew closer our confidence in the kids ability was growing steadily and the three of us were looking forward to graduation. Then about 6 weeks ago our lizard of a boss Anna said that the theme of the graduation ceremony was “International.” She tells us this after we picked our song and dance and now its international? What bloody country does the Time Warp?

The first country that popped into our heads was … India.

Yes I know, the land of Roti and fanatical cricket fans has nothing to do with transsexual goth movies but hey…you gotta give us credit for not picking a country like Thailand where the boys could dress up like ladyboys and wear makeup. Actually that happens anyway in these ceremonies. The boys look like hores.

The past month the kids had hit their peak and the dance wasn’t going to get any better. So with that the school decided that they would make the costumes. When we put forward our idea of while linen pants and long white linen shirts it was casually put aside and in stepped these disgusting bright “gay Aladdin” pants and green sequined tops...that was for the boys. The girls were all dressed in gold so they looked gorgeous.

Sab, Fiona and myself decided to get into the act and join the kids on stage decked out in fully authentic Indian gear thanks to one of our kids parents. So the big day came last Wednesday and well the kids were fantastic, they barely put a foot wrong and they genuinely enjoyed being on stage. The energy from the crowd helped, especially when the three teachers came out. I don’t think the parents had seen anything like it before. We love our kids and we all had a great time jumping to the left and stepping to the right. One of my kids (his name is Long Long but he’s really short short) had a “wardrobe malfunction” and his Aladdin pants fell down a bit on stage.

All in all the audience loved it and while I was getting changed back into my shirt and tie (I was co-hosting again) I could hear the audience applause for the other acts from the Chinese kindergarten…needless to say we shit it in!