The Lovely Mr Nikos

I remember calling at my son’s primary class in Greece and his teacher Mr Nikos seemed unusually agitated.  This was not like him at all.  He was the calmest, nicest Greek I had ever encountered.  His good humour and determined kindness had helped my volatile youngest son Daniel in his first year at Greek primary school.  Not speaking any Greek had been one disadvantage but such was Daniel’s bad temper he even made the boisterous and aggressive Greeks around him seem positively as mild as milk.  You got used to it in our household and sort of coped.  Like the time my uncle had won at monopoly and Daniel had immediately over turned the board and the table, storming out of the room.  In the awkward silence that followed my uncle in dry tones muttered, “Sure, if I knew it meant that much to him, I’d have let him win!”

Taking Daniel to learn team sports had proved equally disastrous.  When other players took the ball, pushed against him, he became righteously indignant and marched of the pitch, stiff necked in rage.  When really angry at home, he would walk onto our balcony and announce his intention to throw himself off.  His other brothers would chorus at such times, “Just do it!”

When a substitute teacher had taken over from the delightfully calm Mr Nikos there had been trouble.  A boy had got up and slapped Daniel on the back of the neck in class.  As Daniel got up to respond, the young teacher had told him to sit down.  Daniel told her what had happened but she informed him she had not seen the slap and he should sit down immediately.  Daniel responded in usual form by telling her she must be blind.  A shouting match ensued with escalating volume on both sides.  Neither would back down and finally the young teacher ran out of the class to seek help.  Daniel by now, was firmly in his, “Kill me if you like, I’m not backing down mode.”  The teacher returned out of breath with Mr Nikos in tow.  The wise Mr Nikos took Daniel outside into the corridor and closed the classroom door.  Having got an irate Daniel on his own, Mr Nikos knelt down in front of him and said in a warm and understanding tone.

“Daniel, I know you are a good boy”

This breeched Daniel’s enraged defences and he immediately burst into heartfelt sobs of apology – what a clever teacher.

So to find the calm, usually unruffled Mr Nikos enraged was a worrying development.  To add to the disquiet every single child in the room was sobbing.  Some with their heads on the table, others held shaking desks with shoulders heaving and tiny girls wailed their distress.  I walked my son home bewildered with the situation.  As we headed along the street Daniel explained that at lunch time a group of children from his class had surrounded a six year old mentally disabled Albanian child in the playground and threw stones at her and shouted abuse.  She had become distraught and Mr Nikos had heard about the event from other teachers as his class filed in for their last lesson of the day.  “What did he say?”  I asked.  Daniel said that Mr Nikos had told them a story about a tiny girl, with many problems, from a foreign country coming to a new school and feeling very alone and afraid.  Then, how she encountered a crowd of bullies who tormented her and even threw stones and abused her.  Imagine, if she was your little sister, he told them sadly and softly.  If your little sister was alone in our playground and it happened to her, how would you feel?  On and on he’d gone for the full 45 minutes until every child howled their hearts out at the injustice and unfairness of it all. – what a teacher!  He’d taught them all a valuable lesson that day.

When we were leaving Rhodes I’d wanted to thank Mr Nikos for all his kindness and wisdom.  So in my crude Greek, I told him how lovely he was, how really, really lovely.  Not knowing much Greek, I tend to re-use the same words.  Daniel squirmed in embarrassment beside me as I stressed again and again how lovely I thought Mr Nikos was.  Feeling that I had at least managed to do the right thing and conveyed my appreciation to a good teacher we headed home.  Daniel then pointed out that my Greek “lovely” actually meant “handsome” or “good looking” and I’d been wittering on about how attractive he was.  How very, very attractive, really good looking in fact.  As my cheeks glowed red in embarrassment, Mr Nikos’ surprised but usual understanding face burned in to my memory banks.