Four Pupils Chipped In to Upgrade Their Teacher’s Sandals

A geography teacher at Zurich International School wore a Hawaiian shirt, a straw hat, and socks with sandals. Four pupils who ate lunch at the desk outside his office decided that the shirt and hat were a look. The sandals were a problem.

So they pooled their money, 160 francs, and bought him a pair of designer slides.

He thanked them. He also thought them too flashy.

He thought them too flashy, which is a strong verdict from a man in a Hawaiian shirt.

I have tried to change my husband’s footwear for fourteen years. The object of my campaign is a pair of brown leather sandals he bought in Madrid in 2011, which he wears from April to October, with socks, on the grounds that his feet get cold. I have hidden them twice. He found them twice. Once, they were in the oven.

For his last birthday the children pooled their money, like the Zurich pupils, and bought him a smart pair of trainers. Forty euros between three of them, plus a loan from me that will never be repaid.

He opened the box at breakfast. He looked at the trainers for a long time. He said, very kindly, that they were lovely. Then he said they were “a bit much”.

Here I must defend him slightly. There is a kind of man, and evidently a kind of geography teacher, who has worked out what he likes and sees no reason to apologise for it. A pupil, or a child, who tries to improve him is offering love in the form of correction, and that is exactly what makes it so hard to accept.

The Zurich teacher took the gift in good part, which is what good teachers do. My husband took his in good part too. He wore the trainers to the children’s school for the next parents’ evening, which they regarded as a complete victory.

He wore them with socks. Brown socks. I am told they were visible from across the hall.

The next morning the old sandals were back. The children were devastated. I was not surprised. Love, in our house, is expressed through footwear and resisted through footwear, and the two have reached a sort of truce.

The trainers now live in the hall. The sandals live on his feet. The socks remain non-negotiable, and the youngest has started saving for a hat.