Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

Having Nothing To Do With The Fourth Of July

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Not sure why this memory reappeared all of a sudden, but I’m glad it did, because now I have a funny to offer you for this weekend.

Ten years ago I taught Spanish at a local community college.

One morning I was collecting homework, and I got to a student who didn’t have his to turn into me. I expressed my displeasure with this state of affairs and he replied,

“Well, if I’d known I was gonna get arrested last night, I would’ve kept my Spanish stuff with me so that I had it when I got out of jail this morning.”

And Then Suddenly, Your Entire Day Can Just Turn Right Around

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So this day kind of started off badly at about 5:30 am when I had to get up and take some medicine because my migraine had come roaring back.

Unfortunately it was still in full swing when my tutoring client arrived for her session.

We were working on an exercise which required her to translate a conversation between Sara and José discussing what kind of movie they wanted to go and see, when she got to the following line:

“¿Adónde quiere ir Sara?”

which means, “Where does Sara want to go?”

So my student began translating the words aloud, and I heard her say,

“Where do…you want…to DO…Sara?”, with absolutely no realization of what she had just said.

And I, rising to the occasion as the mature, responsible adult I am, burst into peals of laughter and almost fell off my chair with glee.

And suddenly, my whole entire day just turned right around.

Helping To Ease The Transition Back Into Work

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Today I saw one of my students for the first time since the Christmas break, and when we were done with Spanish we chatted a bit about our holidays.

“One day some of my friends and I thought it would be fun to get a Ouija board,” he said. “So we got one and were trying to use it at my house, but it didn’t work.”

Apparently they tried to do some troubleshooting, until one of his friends became convinced that he’d discovered the problem.

“Well we are down in your basement,” he said. “You don’t have any cell reception down here. So maybe the spirits can’t get through either.”

Helping To Keep Me Young

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I really enjoy working with high school students, because they help keep me current on many things such as language.

I was recently tutoring one student, and in between Spanish exercises she was telling me stories about her various friends and how they’d “hooked up” with members of the opposite sex.

I had a vague idea of what that term meant when I was a teenager, but I wasn’t sure exactly what it covered these days, so I asked my student to clarify it for me.

She said, “Well it doesn’t mean having sex, but it means you do everything up to right before getting ready to have sex. At least that’s what is means if you’re a teenager. I don’t know what it means to old people.”

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes

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The other day I had a session with one of my new students. I was testing him on his vocabulary in preparation for a test, and we got to the word “edad”, which means “age”.

He couldn’t remember the English definition, so I tried to give him a hint.

I said, “If I tell you, ‘yo tengo treinta y cinco años’ (Literally, “I have 35 years”), then ‘treinta y cinco años’ is my ‘edad’.”

He thought about it for a while, and suddenly the light of comprehension dawned on his face.

So proud with himself for finally arriving at the right answer he yelled out, “I’ve got it-it’s OLD!”

I Am Drunk On My Own Power, Mwa ha ha ha ha!

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A few years ago I was a teacher at a small, religious school.

Fortunately for me, the head of the school was unshakably convinced of my secret identity as The Spawn Of The Devil, or else it would’ve been really easy for me to get the big head.

Because what I didn’t know, having no children of my own, is that kids? Are really easily impressed.

For example, one day I was teaching my third graders, and while I was talking to them I was writing on the board without looking at what my hand was doing!

And dude, once I revealed my magical super hero power of Doing Two Different Things At The Same Time, I totally owned the third grade.

So it’s lucky that I live with three cats, cats who are totally shameless and amoral, cats who condescendingly tolerate our presence in their home because we are the only two beings with opposable thumbs who can open the tub of cat food, cats who pee on every single square inch of the bathroom floor EXCEPT the very expensive, state-of-the-art, self-cleaning litter box we purchased especially for them, because it helps keep me humble and grounded.

And I need that kind of real life reality check to balance out days like yesterday, where I once again used my Magical Superhero Powers Of Awesomeness to outwit The 12-Year-Old Boy Who Is Laboring Heavily Under The Delusion That He Can Totally Play Me.

We were once again forced to confront his evil nemesis-Spanish vocabulary words, and once again he decided that the session would yield much better results for him if he could trick me into telling him the answers, rather than looking the words up himself.

We’ve been on the same chapter with the same vocabulary words for an entire month. We’ve had tests and quizzes and homework assignments on all the words related to clothing, and yesterday he still did not know the Spanish word for “clothes” (did I mention that it’s been a month?!), a fact which did not at all make me feel like a failure as a Spanish tutor, or heavily tempt me to become A Person Who Drinks.

So of course, I told him to look it up in the dictionary, and of course he used his super-keen spidey senses to hone in on my super hero weakness by saying, “Why-don’t you know the answer?” (accompanied by a disgusted head shake and heavy exhale) “Yeah, I bet you don’t even know the answer.”

Right.

Do you have any idea how hard it was not to smite him with the razor-sharp edge of my sarcasm? Really. f*&#ing. hard.

But I’m happy to say that I was able to restrain myself, and instead decided to use my powers for good, limiting myself only to saying, “That doesn’t work on girls.”

He was quite surprised to be let in on that little secret of the universe, telling me that, “If I’d said that to a guy, he would’ve told me the answer.”

Well, little one, welcome to my world.

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: Teenagers

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Yesterday I was working on some new vocabulary words with one of my students. She quickly scanned the list, and from time to time I heard her mutter one of the words under her breath.

“Bargain…department store…size…oh, and there’s the gay man’s section.”

“What?!” I asked, apparently having missed that particular term during my own perusal of the list.

“Jenny,” she replied, in a tone designed to convey that, truly, my stupidity was beyond her ability to comprehend, “it’s synthetic fabrics.”

The Truth Of The Matter

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Jean Browman of Cheerful Monk tagged me to participate in this meme called “Caring, Compassion, Charity”. According to Alex Shalman, the originator, its purpose is to “write about the top 1 or 2 causes that simply make your palms sweat, your heart bleed, and send tears rolling down your cheeks. Make sure you tell everyone why this cause is so important to you as an individual….As people open up what they’re truly passionate about, we’ll get a better grasp on what WE can do to change the world, and why it’s important.”

So I had this whole, long, elaborate blog post all planned out to talk about why I love what I do so much, which is tutor high school students in Spanish. I was going to talk about how satisfying it is to have the time to work one-on-one with specific kids over long periods of time, and to have the ability to establish a relationship with them where they see me as an adult they can trust and talk to about all manner of life issues. I was going to talk about how gratifying it is to see a student, who would normally fall through the cracks in the typical high school environment, blossom when they finally get the chance to be seen, heard, and appreciated. I was going to talk about how exciting it is in that moment when the student finally connects with their own, unique ability to learn, and sees that, “Oh yeah, I really can do this!”

I really do love what I do, for all of those reasons and more. But the truth of the matter is that, when it all comes down, I really love getting to spend all my time having conversations like this:

I am working with a student, and have just asked him to write all his vocabulary words down on a sheet of paper, with the Spanish word on the left and its English translation on the right.

My student: sighing, because he doesn’t know most of the words and has to look each one up in the dictionary.

My student: tiring of doing the assignment “the long way”, gets the bright idea to try and trick me into giving him the answers.

Me: not stupid, unfortunately for him.

My student (casually sliding his hand over the paper so that I can’t see what is-or what isn’t-written there. Unfortunately for him, he’s a few minutes too late.): “Um, I can’t read what I wrote right there. What does ‘barato’ mean again?”

Me: “You mean you can’t read what you ‘wrote’ there in that blank space, the space where you never actually put anything down?”

My student (stunned): “Wow. Usually that works.”

Me: “I’ve tutored a lot of students.” (And dude, you’re 12. It’s not like you’re some sort of Criminal Mastermind.)

I love my work.