Saturday, November 11, 2006

High Risk Job

I know what you guys must be thinking now: "Gosh Mariam is such a drama queen. Fine so the kids are a handful, but to actually call it a high risk job!!! That's pushing it".

And I have to agree. While the kids sure are a handful, and cause serious damage to one's vocal cords (among numerous other things!), they hardly qualify as a "risk" (at least not officially:P).

The aspect of my job that truly could be the death of me is my... Abaya!!
Yep, since our school is bilingual and strongly Islamic, the dress code has to include Abayas.
Mind you I'm all for loose-fitting clothes that fulfill Islamic requirements, it's just that Abayas totally put me off. It must be the fact that they are so BLACK and, well, shapeless!!
Very unflattering. And in summer (KUWAIT summer no less!) they do an amazing job of absorbing the sun, and making a desperate situation, even more so! (That alone could kill you, take my word on it.)

That said, it's not really beauty concerns that bother me right this moment; it's more the fact that I might soon end up battered and maimed because of it!!

A little background knowledge on me so you'd view this in context:
I absolutely and utterly do not have any sense of balance, and that thing they call "center of gravity"- yep, I'm missing that too.
Those of you who were unlucky enough to go on hiking/camping trips with me, know that mariam+ backpack the size of a hippo (we do tend to over pack when it comes to goodies, don't we sis?:P) and a sleeping bag= DANGER. I'd be swaying back and fourth with my load, bumping into anything and everything within a 5 meter radius! Come to think of it, I'd be swaying back and forth even without the hippo-sized backpack.

So you see, I'm awkward as it is. With a Abaya, I'm a disaster waiting to happen. As I run up and down the stairs, I'm always ALWAYS tripping over my Abaya and barely avoiding a head concussion. (I end up grabbing my Abaya and tying it up my waist- which is kinda frowned upon, not that I care!). And in class, the seam always gets caught on pointy edges, which result in me being jerked in the opposite direction and nearly flipping over- incidents that never fail to amuse my students.

I'm telling ya, my obituary is gonna say:
"22- year-old science teacher, life had to be cut short due to a very very unfortunate Abaya incident. Students are still heard laughing"

I'm tellin ya, high risk job!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How could I have missed, TOTALLY missed, your abaya post. My tummy hurts from laughing. 3ala shoo wala 3ala shoo.

From your description it doesn't look like a 3abayeh aleelet adab. Only hiking it up to your waist, would ummm, definitely make it so :P

But wait, you didn't have to wear it last year did you? Is it because you're in the boys' school now?

Mar Yoom said...

LOL
as a matter of fact it IS my abaya "aleelet adab"- it's actually because it has a lot of "openings" that it gets stuck on things:P

Well, I was kinda supposed to wear one last year, but I was like NO WAY. I got a lot of warnings:P
But yeah, it helped that I was in the girl's section!