79 Percent of Teachers Want Gift Cards. One Kept the Mug.

I read this standing in a gift shop holding a mug.

It said WORLD'S BEST TEACHER. I had chosen it for the youngest's second-grade teacher after twenty minutes of deliberation, because it was warm without being excessive, personal without being odd, and $14.99. Seven percent is not a market. It is a hostage situation.

The poll's comments made it worse. One commenter, quoted by the paper, still hangs ornaments made by 1980s students on the Christmas tree every year, likes gift cards too, "But not Starbucks: I don't drink coffee. Total Wine also has gift cards." That is the most precise wish list I have ever seen, and it ends at a liquor store.

I put the mug back. I picked it up again. The man at the register asked whether I needed a bag or a minute.

Then I found the case for the defense. A geography teacher, posting anonymously on Reddit, remembered a student in senior geography handing over a world's-best-teacher mug and explaining at once: "I got it for you because of the map!" The superlative was incidental. The continents were the gift.

Another teacher on the same forum had been asked on a Friday for a favorite animal. The answer was an okapi, which is the most inconvenient animal a child can be given on a weekend. On Monday the student came in with an origami okapi, colored to match. The teacher was delighted.

This is the trouble with children. They don't buy for the poll. They ask a question on Friday and come back on Monday with the answer, folded. I had asked nobody anything. I had bought a sentence.

So I asked the youngest what her teacher likes. She thought about it for a long time and said, "Maps." I went back to the shop. The mug was still there, and on the back, which I had never turned round, was a map of the world.

She delivered it on Friday and explained, before her teacher had read the front, "It's because of the map." Then, so there would be no confusion: "Dad liked the other side."