After several years of teaching science in secondary schools in England I decided to change my life and made several applications to bilingual schools around the globe. I didn't have any particular choice about where I would go and in fact I decided that if I was offered a job I would let that be my fate and go to live wherever that might take me.
I received a handful of rejections before I was contacted by Don Borja Fernando Garcia, the principal of a bilingual sixth form college in Bogota, Columbia. There was a post available teaching science at advanced level and the students I would have in my charge would be re-sitting their university entrance exams. They would be effectively doing their final year again and consequently the students would be of adult age, the youngest of them having reached at least 19 years of age.
That I would be teaching young adults really appealed to me because older students are much easier to work with, or at least so I thought. So I accepted the post and then made plans to find my way to Bogota prior to the beginning of the new term. I decided to take in several Central American and South American countries on my way and selected Puerto Rico as a good place to begin and where I went after that I could choose at a later date.
As the school term approached I was passing time in Argentina, in Buenos Aires and it was from there that I flew to Bogota in order to keep my appointment with Don Garcia at my new school. I had taken the opportunity to shop for several new shirts that would be appropriate for the climate in my new home and these were principally of lightweight cotton and short sleeved without the long tail that is warmer for colder climates. I also took the opportunity to have my beard styled and all in all I have to say that with my broad shoulders and at 1.83m tall I presented a rather impressive handsome manly figure.
The first day of the new term was an inaugural day for the staff only and late in the afternoon I met with Don Garcia to discuss the classes that I would teach. Don Garcia made it clear that although my students were retaking their exams this didn't relate to a lack of intelligence as all the students were apparently very bright. He told me however that several of the students had simply become distracted from their studies, perhaps he said they had chosen the wrong time to become adults as far as their studies were concerned.
In fact, he told me, the students largely female, were one could say, rather splendid examples of femininity and had received rather too much attention from boys when they should have been studying. Well I was rather intrigued and I certainly was looking forward to the following day when I would meet these apparently divine young ladies.
"It is essential to impose a sense of discipline to these wayward young souls and for this reason unlike other students of their age the board of governors has decreed that the students should remain in their school uniforms and they should not be allowed to wear their own clothes nor be bejewelled", Don Garcia informed me.
He went on "also the students will be referred to formally as Miss so and so, using their family names and not be granted the privilege of first name terms". And indeed that I should expect them to refer to me as Mr. Martin or sir at all times.
Miss Brun, Miss Carry, Miss Kloss, Miss Portero, Miss Rodriguez and Master Fernandez were the names that I saw in front of me on the register as I sat at my desk in the laboratory awaiting the arrival of my class the following morning. It was a fine, warm September morning so then it was not surprising that my students arrived carrying their blazers. In fact it was only the five young ladies that appeared at the door of the laboratory there was no sign of Master Fernandez.
"Good morning ladies, I trust that you are all well rested following your summer vacation and looking forward to a very successful academic year. My name is Mr. Martin and I am from England and delighted to meet you all."
In unison the five young women replied as though it were a chorus, "Yes sir, Mr. Martin."
"You may all go and stand by your seats and please arrange yourselves in alphabetical order, when I read each of your names from my register you may be seated", I told them.
I watched as the young ladies entered the laboratory, each was dressed identically in short red tartan skirts, black sleeveless singlets on top, white nylon knee high socks or white cotton ankle socks and black and white saddle shoes. They were indeed uniformly dressed and the only thing that caught my eye and might have been identified as jewellery was that one of the young ladies was wearing a very large chunky pink wrist watch. Clearly their underwear was unregulated as I noticed the straps of their brassieres showing from their sleeveless singlets and they were an assortment of colours and styles, pink, white and black.
And something stirred in my trousers.
