Beer For The Boys ? --- Pupils I Remember (3)

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Days-out with pupils rarely pass without something extraordinary happening. If the teacher is lucky, it's something funny or at least something one can laugh about in hindsight. Once I had a class of ~14 year-old-pupils, boys and girls. We had agreed on travelling by train (something which pupils always like because they often only travel by car with their parents) to a small town in a mountainous region and to walk through the woods there, admire a waterfall, look at a horse breeding farm, have a picnic, play football or chat and walk back. (Walking is something most pupils hate from puberty onwards, but what can one do? These days-out are part of school life. Someone in the Ministry of Education thinks that they're a good thing). We had to change trains at a small station. We were waiting on the platform. The pupils were chatting and giggling. I was bored. I decided to have a cup of coffee in the pub of the station. When I entered, I noticed two boys at the counter and a woman behind it putting two half litre glasses of beer in front of them. It was about half past nine in the morning! More importantly, however, the boys were very clearly under age. A blind one with a cane could see that (as the Germans say [politically incorrectly]). One of them could hardly reach the counter. I addressed the woman in a loud and stern voice, "Are you crazy? Take the beers back!" She became cheeky and asked, "And who's going to pay for them?" I said, "You can call yourself lucky if I don't inform the police about what you've just done." This shut her up. The boys had vanished during this exchange of pleasantries. They behaved well during the rest of the day and as nothing bad had really happened, I let it be. ----- If you click on the green bar at the top of the page, you can find my other posts on the topic.