Those Nice Men.

The Nice Men are my daily conflict.  How do I treat them right?  It is a question of etiquette that I ask myself every day.

The Nice Men always sit at the back of the teacher's makeshift cafeteria, which in itself is actually a curtain pulled along a track to seperate us from a combination cooking/chemistry lab.  They are the male teachers, a minority at my school.  They are four spryish physical education teachers, one wizen math teacher, one Principle and one unknown.  Any combination, and on rare occasions all of them, will be seated by the time enter with my lunch. 

Koreans travel in flocks, eat in flocks and leave the table in flocks.  But I am not in sync, I come to the table late, I eat slow.  I can feel the strain as I sit, the last one eating at a table of men who have laid their chopsticks down and are now bound only by social moors.  When they finally get up, I hear the sound of twigs snapping.  Some of them say "I'm sorry," as they leave.

But I can't not sit with them.  I have looked at their near empty bowls and tried to hunker down at the next table so that they can leave with a clear concience.  But then I am certain I can feel them wondering why I didn't sit with them.  These Nice Men, I don't know how to treat them best.