Trini Trannies and Green Goo... It's good to be home

The pondering teacher look

The offender


It has been just over a month since I arrived home from a teaching stint in Trinidad. Wow! What an amazing experience that was! I extend a big thanks to those who emailed me letters of encouragement and support while I was away. It was fun sharing my daily (mis)adventures with the various dangers and flavours of Trinidadian culture and vernacular.

Now that it is January, I have started teaching at Kitchener Elementary School on the border of Burnaby and East Vancouver. I am trying my best to adjust to the daily issues of life in Canada that I somehow forgot about when I was concerned with conquering or being conquered by beetles giant and small, nourishing myself with ‘street meat’, coping with no toilet paper in any washrooms, or not getting followed by troops of Trinidadian cross dressing man hookers darting across the street in the southern most island in the Caribbean.

Yes, one afternoon, as I was so bravely adventuring into the township of Tunapuna with a couple friends (the name alone suggests that perhaps I should have just gone to the mall), to procure myself some veggies from the open air market, I had a sixth sense that something was afoot. I was generally particularly cautious to avoid potential muggers by being aware of my surroundings and walking with purpose, but if that didn’t work, I knew that I could just scrunch up my face so that it suggested that, now and then, when I’ve had to do it, I’ve killed. But something was disturbing my inner harmony, and I thought it wise to turn around and see just what was going on behind me.

Four figures suddenly ran across the road. Men? They were tall, slender, very muscular. They wore pink hot pants. Women? They ware makeup. Cross-dressers? Amazonian queens? They had evidently been trailing us for some time. Hmmm.Yes. Trinidadian cross dressers. Not my thing at all. We dashed across the road and kept going until we reached the relative safety of a post office. I could see them strutting, swinging their purses. Well, I thought, they’re going to have to take their heels off if they want to pursue us. Unwilling to part with their shoes, they turned and disappeared into the smoggy afternoon. What a lively way to punctuate my stay in this bizarre country.

But, I digress…

Life back at home has presented its own challenges. Over the past few days I have endeavored so carefully to overlook the Petri dish that is my toothbrush holder. I stand at the bathroom sink, washing my hands, cautious to avoid looking down the toothbrush holes in the top of the yellow daffodil covered ceramic Home Outfitter’s special. Ugh, where to look, then? Ah, yes. Mirror seems like a good choice. Ew, blackheads. Ok, just look at the mirror, not the reflection. Ick, toothpaste and floss splatters. Eyes gaze down to the abridged process of evolution that has chosen my toothbrush holder as its site of mutation.

A few days pass like this. Finally, Saturday rolls around. I spend the day trying my best to organize ideas for teaching. Naturally, as soon as I sit down, I have to pee. Off to the bathroom. I wash my hands, and the toothbrush holder is like a bad car accident. Against my best judgment, I cannot help but look to see if the primordial ooze is still there. Maybe it has developed some form of mobility and found some other apartment to torment. Alas, it has not. It sits there contentedly, defiantly. I pick up the yellow toothbrush holder and gaze into its 4 holes.

Immediately, the inner teacher in me wonders how I could turn this scenario into a lesson plan. The phrase ‘natural consequence’ flashes through my mind. Yes, Vanessa, I mean Miss Nordstrom; this green goop is a natural consequence of month after month of cleaning apathy. Hmmm. I wonder if this is a problem for many people. I imagine being one of those super teachers in all the amazing teacher movies I have seen (I’m thinking Dangerous Minds, Take the Lead, Lean on Me, and the latest Freedom Writers). What would I do in this situation? Create some sort of council of concerned teachers for clean toothbrush holders? No, that’s totally lame. I snap back to reality and realize that I am still holding the offending slime container. I should easily be able to flush it out by running it under the tap, or so I thought. The stuff was not going without a fight. Ingeniously, an idea comes to me. I unwrap the cellophane from a tampon, and try to swipe out the goo. Foiled, it is not bendy enough to get to the crevices. Alas, I wrap my finger in Kleenex, and stick it in the drainage hole. It works. I loosen some slime, and rinse water through the top holes. Progress at last. I stare into the holes triumphantly, but what is that sound? I hold up the daffodil toothbrush holder to my ear… pop rocks? The residual green colonies are hissing with the emphatic likeness of the wicked witch of the West, “I’m melting!” it seemingly says.

I have left this for far too long, I decide. I allow the remaining patches of slime to toil in agony, and resolve to get a new toothbrush holder at my earliest convenience.

I wash my hands (thoroughly), and return to lesson planning, the joys of teaching grade one. I finally get to find out just how do astronauts go to the bathroom in space? I love being home.