A Minor Incident

There was no warning. The argument went off suddenly, like a burnt out lightbulb, right in the middle of class. A student on one side of the room said the Iranian housewives on the other had been talking about her. Accusations pinged back and forth, and it took a lot of recriminations and quite a few tears before I managed to calm everyone down again. Hopefully the only irreparable damage was to the second half of my lesson plan.