Magical policeman

My third year class gave their presentations today. This was the one where they had to take a children's story and add a policeman. The presentations were generally a huge improvement over last time, although they were VERY giggly. (Not that I blame them, really. I'd be giggly too, if I had to do a presentation in a foreign language I wasn't very good at.) There was a lot of laughter, and the audience was far more attentive than usual. Since most of the students used pictures in their presentations, even the ones who had trouble understanding the English at least tried to follow the stories. Some of my students are amazingly talented at drawing.

Only one story had a major problem, but unfortunately that problem was that I couldn't understand a word of it. I had expected more of this, because they did not do their homework last week and I had not checked the English, so I suppose I should be pleased that there was only one.

But even in the incomprehensible story the pictures were very good and would probably have helped, except that I got distracted right at the beginning. In one of the earliest pictures I could see that there was a policeman involved, as I'd instructed, but when he first appeared, in dramatic close-up, what I saw was a tiny policeman standing on a penis, or else a normal-sized policeman standing on a very large penis. It was hard to tell. These were line drawings, manga-style.

I gaped, but while the rest of the audience laughed, it wasn't THAT sort of laughter, and it gradually dawned on me that I must be wrong about the penis. The next picture, which was a wider view, made it clear that in fact it was not a penis but a thumb (and a tiny, magical policeman). You could see the rest of the hand. I was able to relax.

But I still cannot understand why nobody else noticed the penis. This class is mostly guys. They're around 20 years old and will usually pounce on anything that even hints of being a little bit naughty, and milk it for all it's worth. I know they had been talking about their stories amongst themselves last week, and probably already knew that it was a thumb and so that's what they were prepared to see, but STILL. I am fairly sure that even if I had been expecting a thumb I would have been pretty surprised by that picture. And I thought I had the cleanest mind in the room.

Apparently I thought wrong. What a disconcerting idea.