cootiness

Hello everyone! I am alive again and the marking is almost completed. I do not know how my Ost-Asian colleagues survive year after year of all this. It is very intensive, it is very extensive.

Today is funny. I meet my friend Hokk and his Hokkien friend. They are discussing something they heard junior teachers talking about in their school canteen. They say, "We heard some junior teachers calling our vice-principals old coots. What is a coot?"

I say, I have not heard this term a long time. In California it is rare. In Danmark, it is non-existent. What is 'coot'?

Hokk says, "I think is some sort of slow duck of genus Fulikka. Maybe can look it up." (Later I do, and I find he is right, is genus Fulica. I cannot spell so easily verbatim.)

Then why are your young teachers calling older colleagues old coots, I ask them. Well, says Hokkien friend, they are kind of old. And one of them keeps saying she wants to retire. The other one might mention it but doesn't mean it.

I am so confused. Don't they want to enjoy their children and grandchildren and not deal with all these pickled herrings?

We have pleasant discussion and good coffee. Then the Hokkien friend (see, he does not want to be associated with this conversation) has to leave because he is still having work to do. So we break up and go our own ways. But I will always remember the coots.

*****

Edit: Oh yes, here is list of coots I found. There are so many of them! I wonder what kind of coot Hokk is thinking of now.

Red-knobbed Coot, Fulica cristata
Eurasian Coot, or Common Coot, Fulica atra
Hawaiian Coot, Fulica alai
American Coot, Fulica americana
Caribbean Coot, Fulica caribaea
White-winged Coot, Fulica leucoptera
Andean Coot, Fulica ardesiaca
Red-gartered Coot, Fulica armillata
Red-fronted Coot, Fulica rufifrons
Giant Coot, Fulica gigantea
Horned Coot, Fulica cornuta
Mascarene Coot, Fulica newtoni (extinct, c.1700)
Chatham Island Coot, Fulica chathamensis (prehistoric)
New Zealand Coot, Fulica prisca (prehistoric)
Fulica infelix (fossil: Early Pliocene of Juntura, USA)
Fulica shufeldti (fossil: Pleistocene of North America) - possibly a subspecies of Fulica americana