Pact Of Silence With Forty Boys

“SENSEI. STUPID. STOP TALKING. JUST SHUT UP. SHUT THAT GAPING HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF YOUR FACE. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!!!1111”

My Japanese isn’t great but I was able to get that much of it. My second year boys at the technical high school are awesome. It was straight out of a Japanese anime with unruly, ‘spirited’ students. Fortunately, they liked me.

Imagine an overzealous translator. He interrupts you every time you blink or pause to take a breath, only to instruct you to repeat what you just said. Interruption follows. Repetition follows. It is a never-ending vicious cycle of boredom leaving your weighted eyelashes fluttering and you pinching yourself in any possible area of exposed skin just to keep yourself from falling asleep.

This is what Mr. M’s English class at the technical school is like. The first group I had with this man just sat back and took it instead of simply killing him which clearly would have been the better course of action.

I was dreading class with this man again, but was in for a pleasant surprise. Some forty boys came to my rescue like a bunch of underage knights in shining armor and would start screaming at the teacher whenever he interrupted me. Several of them even got up from their chairs and looked as though they were about to physically remove the man. Eventually he got the message and sat back down on his sad little stool where he stopped wagging his tongue.

The Stool: Mr. M has a bum knee and therefore he teaches the class whilst sitting on a little wooden stool that he keeps in the front of the room. Upon entering the class the stool was nowhere to found. The boys, all demurely sitting like angels at perfect right angles at their desks, watched the teacher fumble around on the barren platform looking utterly perplexed: “Now where did that thing go? I know it was here. Excuse me, Nicole-sensei, I need to find a stool.”

As soon as he left the boys erupted into wild laughter. One boy looked at me, ran to the corner of the room and exposed the purloined stool where they had hidden it behind a curtain.

I have to give these boys credit. There aren’t too many places in typical, barren, ugly Japanese classrooms that one can hide something as big as a stool. I broke into laughter and had to stifle it as the teacher walked back into the room.

These boys are by far my favorite class. Mr. M has a way of eliciting more personal information from me than is necessary. He will ask questions and it’s hard to avoid answering when you have a class of inquisitive eyes looking expectantly at you. The boys’ eyes lit up upon learning that I was half Japanese-American and could speak (menial) Japanese. Several of them leap out of their chairs and very matter-of-factly told the teacher to leave: “We don’t need you now. Your presence is no longer required. Godspeed.”

Mr. M, much to his credit would translate what was going on in the class for me. But it was pretty clear, even with my crap-language skills, what was going on.

After I had talked for a while I went around the room to chat with the students and help them figure out the questions. Basically I had to check their comprehension and translate certain words. It’s a learning experience for me as well as I’m forced to try out my shit Japanese. I inevitably end up using sentence constructions and verb forms that don’t really exist in any language except maybe Klingon. They do the same in English. This makes us even. It’s a classroom full of poor grammar that would make both Dickens and Soseki tremble.

I came to one of the middle rows and knelt down to help a boy with the ever-challenging question: “Name three countries Nikki has been to.” A circle gathered around me. But we were not discussing my global travels at all.

“So, REALLY, what do you think of Mr. M?” one of the students prodded.

I waffled, skirted around the question for a bit and then finally confessed (in Japanese), “Alright. Weeeeeell he’s a little strange, isn’t he?”

This elicited uproarious laughter and a round of applause from all the boys. I motioned for them to be quiet with a shish gesture and we formed a bond, a pact if you will, of secrecy. There’s nothing that draws people together than the joint shunning and ostracism of another living creature.

“What? You don’t like him?” I asked.

“LIKE HIM?! I HATE HIM!!!111” And this particular student had absolutely no compunction about directly telling the teacher exactly that.

The group of boys then launched into an intensely emphatic denunciation of the poor teacher’s ‘oily head’ (that they know the English for) and said something along the lines of, ‘When you look at him, don’t you just want to hurl?’ Now this is a rough translation but in my head that is how it went.

After I had finished going around the room it was time to go over the answers. I had numerous volunteers for every single question. This was the only class that told me not only three countries I had been to, but EVERY single one that I had spoken about. Shit. They were actually paying attention. Ironically enough this is the only self-introduction class in which I handed out not a single piece of candy. It was awesome – they needed no prodding, or sugar inducement at all.

These boys may not know English all that well either but they were the only class that was able to tell me correctly where Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum are located. I was getting seriously tired of attempting to convince these children that no, the Eiffel Tower is NOT in Tokyo.

The class ended. “WOO-HOO GYM CLASS!!!” they whooped. And my forty something teenage knights in shining armor started stripping before I even had time to leave the room.

**I have absolutely no idea what that is a picture of but I thought the caption was fitting: “Oh my god.”

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Published:
10.2.06 / 5pm
Category:
classroom antics, amusing incidents