Instilling Love In The Loveless. Oh, and Snot.

A boy stopped me on the way home. He pulled his bike to a halt and hopped off. Quickly and in semi-fluent English, he said:

“I don’t know how to love. Ask me why.”

“Oh my. At such a young age. This is tragic. You can’t possibly be dead inside at fifteen, but well, no. I was too at that age. Ok I give. Why?”

He did not expect a response and so hopped back onto his bike and sped his soul-less, forsaken, love-less self home to cry, listen to Bright Eyes and paint all his windows black.

Skip to today. We are practicing simple greeings.

“How are you today?” I ask him.

He gives me a perfect English sentence.

“I am happy because I love you,” he grins.

I return to the staff room and unroll the ol’, rather scanty resume. Under skills I scratch in, “Well-versed in teaching adolescent Japanese boys incapable of love the skill of loving,” right under “enthusiastic about conversational Latin, Irish and other languages that are dead or in the process of dying.”

Later that day:

A girl flies out of the bathroom. She calls to her friend, “LOOK! LOOK!”

She fakes a sneeze, covers her nose and then unveils it. A giant, disgusting, what appears to be, wad-of-snot clings to her finger.

These are my students.

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Published:
5.23.07 / 2pm
Category:
classroom antics, what i call life