Oh, the Joys of Coffee

I've been thinking a lot about student teaching lately. Exactly one year ago this week I tearfully finished up my last day at a local high school, and I'm meeting up with my cooperating teacher in a few days to catch up. I can't wait. As I was reminiscing, I remembered this rather hilarious incident from my student teaching days that I just had to share.

My cooperating teacher and I had a standing appointment with the coffee pot in the teacher's workroom everyday before school. We'd pour our coffee (which I usually needed after waking up at 6:00 a.m.), she'd check her box, and we'd head to first period.

One morning she was running late and didn't have time to run her morning errands, so she asked me to check her box, retrieve the day's copies, and bring her some coffee while she taught class. So, I dutifully visited the copy room, grabbed the mail from her box, and ventured to the coffee machine.

My hands were full with mail and copies, and I attempted to balance everything under my arms as I poured the coffee into a Styrofoam cup. I say "attempted" for a reason. Somewhere in the process, I poured an entire carafe of coffee onto the floor while aiming for that little cup. The liquid showed dark brown against the blue carpet and quickly formed a stain the size of a large beach ball. I immediately looked to my left and right, and thankfully I was the only person in the workroom. I was slightly panicking at this point, thinking through the best way to explain how exactly I managed to pour a full pitcher of coffee on the floor, when something came to me.

I peeked into the secretary's office next door and quietly said, "Um, someone spilled some coffee on the floor in the workroom. I just wanted to let you know."

"Oh dear!" she replied. "Thank you for telling me. We'll get someone right on that."

The stain remained on the floor for the rest of the semester.