Sheepish
by Tony Dawson

 

 

Penelope was a well-to-do city girl who thought she was pretty smart and she wasn’t happy with the fact that she was having to spend her first year as a probationary teacher in a village school. This was her first day in front of a class of 6-year-olds. As she surveyed the thirty round, disgustingly healthy, rustic faces, she groaned inwardly. What was a clever, ambitious, young teacher like her going to learn from teaching yokels? Ugh!

 

The children stared back at her, gormlessly, or so she thought. They didn’t make a sound. Were they dense or just over-awed by the sight of this stunningly beautiful and obviously clever product of city life? “Well, I suppose I’d better make a start,” she mused. “Anything to get them talking and find out if they are as dim as they look.”

 

She had already come up with an idea to get things moving. While looking round the village, she’d found a picture of a sheep in an old bookshop and had decided that it would be the perfect way to break the ice with the little bumpkins and to encourage them to say something. Very carefully, she unrolled the beautifully detailed illustration and pinned it to the board. Thirty little faces lit up, and an excited murmur ran round the class. “Well,” she thought, “they are actually alive!”

 

 “Right, then,” the teacher said brightly, “What’s this a picture of?” There was an uncomfortable silence followed by a lot of whispering to each other behind cupped little hands. “Oh, come on,” she said rather irritably, “You all live in the country. Surely you can tell me what this is!” (“My, God,” she muttered under her breath, “How dense can they be? They can't even recognize a bloody sheep when they see one! What have I done to deserve this!”)

 

After what seemed like an eternity, a small boy on the front row tentatively put his hand up and said shyly, in a broad West Country accent, “D’ya mind if I have a closer look, Miss?” The teacher could hardly contain her contempt for this poor, rustic imbecile who needed a closer look to tell her that there was a picture of a sheep on the board!

 

 “Why, of course not,” she replied with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

 

The little boy stood up and made his way to the board where he peered intently at the picture for a couple of minutes. Then, he turned round and, with a beaming face, thumbs up, and a note of triumph in his voice, said, “I thought as much. It’s a Border Leicestershire ewe, Miss.”

 

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