Admission-time bloopers

I am in the middle of the annual admission season, and every year all sorts of weird things happen during this time, some annoying, some surprising, some plain hilarious. I wish I could have recorded all the funny ones on video and uploaded them on YouTube: I'm sure it would have become a runaway hit. People would be amazed and abashed: 'Is that what we look and sound like in public?' Folks have started crying when I told them I couldn't take in any more kids; others have insisted that I should just take in their child and then shut the doors, and yet others gone away with the firm impression that I am a very arrogant person, refusing to understand why I keep the numbers within manageable limits...

In their distracted hurry, folks do and say strange things. One has carried away the notebook which I gave him to write down the details of his child - name, address, phone number and stuff - another has left his own slippers behind and walked away in another's. Some have, after going faithfully through the entire admission process and even paying the fees, asked 'Sir, what do you teach?' I could go on and on.

One of the common misunderstandings was repeated this week. Since people were flooding in to get admitted to the class 9 batches, I had assumed (through a foolish oversight: I should have known better) that this boy, too, had come for the same reason. After he had been admitted, I was beginning to tell his parents the rules (I don't even trust them to read and understand the contents of the printed notices I give them, so I repeat verbally), the mother suddenly blurted out 'But he's in class 10 now!' Neither parents nor son had bothered to tell me, maybe because I, being clairvoyant, was simply supposed to know by looking at his face. I immediately corrected the error, of course, but imagine how lost and confused the poor kid must have felt if he had turned up and found that he was attending a class full of his juniors!