My Inner Language Learner Is Hurting

It's the last hour of a long, three-hour class. Attentions are straying, and although I'd love to put us all out of our misery and dismiss everybody early, I can't do it: the final is next week. "Haluk, can you tell me which room of the house has the yellow floor?" I ask hopefully.

Caught off guard, Haluk hunches forward and chews his lip as he desperately searches his book for the answer. But it's no good: he hasn't been paying attention and he doesn't have the foggiest idea what the answer is.

"Teacher, I am very boring," he confesses.

I smile inwardly, tempted to let this one stand. No matter how many times I tell my students that their feelings should be expressed with -ed words and not -ing words -- embarrassed, bored, excited, interested -- they always tell me that they are boring, frustrating, tiring, etc. And although they often frustrate, tire and bore the socks off me, I know what they really mean.

"You mean you're bored, right?"

"Teacher, we are all boring," Haluk insists, gesturing around the classroom. My mouth twitches as I see heads nodding in confirmation. Fortunately, one of Haluk's smarter classmates leans over and whispers a correction.

"Bored!" Haluk almost shouts, throwing up his hands. "We are bored!"

"I know how you feel," I reason, "But we've got to cover these last few units. And there's just one more week until the final exam."

There is a collective sigh. "Teacher," Sevgi groans, "this book very bored."

"Boring," I mutter, irritated beyond reason. Because the truth is, their textbook isn't the least bit boring. There are colorful photographs and cartoons and the language is relevant and useful. The authors have made a real effort to include subjects kids are likely to know about and find interesting, and the vocabulary has been chosen using a carefully researched data base. There are funny stories and diverting games and intriguing puzzles and optional songs, and where do these kids get off calling this book boring?

Ooh, I could show them what boring really is! My first Japanese textbooks had columns full of drills. There were black and white illustrations of dopey looking people in business suits, stilted conversations with no attempt made at humor or intrigue, and long, tiresome vocabulary lists. And our book didn't come with CDs that included songs and funny conversations and interesting extracts from real radio programs; we had to go to the language laboratory to do 30 minutes a day of drills there. Watashi wa yubinkoku e ikimashita, a woman with a perky voice intoned, and we sat with headphones on and parroted the same thing back to no one at all.

The teachers at the school I attended in Japan wrote their own book and it was a brave effort, but it was nothing more than poorly mimeographed pages stapled together, clumsily illustrated. Some attempt was made to make the topics chosen interesting and there was a running story about an American man (with the unlikely and hilarious name of Penny) and his adventures studying Japanese. My fellow classmates and I weren't big fans of the fictitious Penny. He sounded like a hopeless nerd, but also like a huge kiss-ass. He spoke perfect Japanese, knew what to do in every possible situation, and had a lot of admiring Japanese friends. He was depicted as blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and pointy-nosed, which we particularly loathed. The only good thing about the Penny book was that we all got a lot of pleasure running him down after class.

When my Japanese got to the intermediate level, I was desperate to acquire more vocabulary, so I bought half a dozen books to help me. None of them were illustrated and all of them had long lists of vocabulary with phonetic readings and English translations. No context was provided, and there was no attempt made to show the frequency of occurrence.

The year I took the Japanese Language Proficiency Examination, it seemed like every bookstore in Tokyo had suddenly begun to stock Japanese textbooks that were more than grocery lists of drills and vocabulary -- books with good listening exercises, useful vocabulary with plenty of context, and pertinent photographs, all professionally bound and published. All those years I spent studying Japanese, I'd have killed for a textbook half as good as the one my students find so boring.

"This story very boring," Sevgi scoffs, flicking a long manicured nail at the page. The story in question is about Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and their house in Mexico City. It might not be a thrill a minute, but it beats drills and vocabulary lists with a stick.

For my next lesson, maybe I'll bring in a couple of phone books. And perhaps an introduction to Penny is in order.

Getting It

"One more time: page one of the listening test, question one!" I shout over the roar of the class.

Coskun doesn't hear me. He's in the midst of a noisy tete-a-tete with Hamit and whatever they're talking about must be compelling: I've tried to hush them up twice now, unsuccessfully. "Coskun! Hamit!" I call again to no avail.

Well, I know a way to get their attention. I flick the CD player's volume switch up as far as it will go and press PLAY, then frown. Nothing's happening. It's taken me five minutes to deliver a pep talk on the mock exam my students have just performed abysmally on and another five minutes to take attendance. The last thing in the world I need is a non-functioning CD player, but that's what I've got.

Just as I'm about to ask a student to exchange the faulty CD player, in comes Sevge, ten minutes late. "Tee-cha, I am here!" she gasps redundantly. I sigh: I've run out of test sheets and Burak won't know where to find these; I'll have to go downstairs and get the CD player and test sheets myself. Leaving the room, I almost collide with Aziz. "Teacher, I am present?" he calls after me, obviously expecting me to rush right back so I can put a check next to his name in the roll book. On my way downstairs, I pass another student making her way upstairs. "Teacher, I am here?" she calls, but I decline to answer.

Two minutes later, I am back with another CD player and half a dozen extra test sheets. The classroom volume has gone up another notch; the natives are restless. I distribute test sheets, pop the CD into the new player, and press PLAY. It doesn't work.

I'm starting to sweat now. Hamit and Coskun are half out of their seats, practically jumping up and down. "Teacher what is problem?" Coskun roars happily. Coskun is the kind who will blame me for anything -- a wasp in the classroom, a wonky chair, a spilled bottle of Coke in the corner, it doesn't matter. I check the plug socket, the settings -- yes, it's on CD -- the light switches. The overhead lights flicker on, flooding the sun-filled classroom, so it isn't a power failure.

"Teacher, I get another player?" suggests Burak, a quiet, respectful boy. I nod wearily.

I've got a handful of kids like Burak in this class. Two pleasant, intelligent central Asian girls, a near-native English speaker from Iran, a few boys who aren't bright, but more than make up for it with their quiet maturity and the ability to sit still for 45 whole minutes. They will never know how grateful I am for their presence. In the midst of a hellish lesson where nothing is going right, I see the light of understanding in their faces and realize to my amazement that I'm actually making sense to someone. Posing some general question to the class, I hear, through the cacophony and chaos, their in-the-right-ballpark answers, and I am touched and reassured. True, 85% of the class are lost in space, but I can't be that hopeless a teacher if somebody's getting it.

Burak comes back with another CD player. I plug it in and look for the CD. It isn't there. "Burak, did you take the CD out of the last player?" I ask him. His mouth drops open and he slaps his forehead and vanishes. Coskun and Hamit think this is hilarious. "Burak forget CD!" Coskun cries, pounding on his desk.

By the time Burak is back with the CD, the classroom noise is close to deafening and I don't even bother to pound on the table. I slide the CD into the player, press PLAY, and offer up a quiet but fervent prayer. But the CD gods are not with me: nothing happens.

Now Hamit and Coskun might as well be spectators at a circus. They guffaw and holler as they bounce up and down in their seats, clearly enjoying every minute of my misery. Suddenly I have an inspiration. I pull out the plug and insert it into the next socket. The CD player, tuned to RADIO blasts out a top-volume high-pitched screech of Arabesque, making us all jump out of our skins. Coskun roars and feigns anger. "Teacher!" he screams accusingly, covering his ears and pointing. "Noisy!" bellows Hamit, throwing up his hands in mock rage. Hypocrites.

Five minutes later, we're right in the middle of the listening exam revision and I accidentally jog the plug, resulting in the CD going right back to the beginning. The class roars in frustration: the listening test is all on one tract and we'll have to listen to the whole thing over again, each question repeated in maddening, carefully enunciated tones. It takes forever.

We take a much needed break during which I put my head on my desk and pray for the strength to go on.

"Teacher, can't hear!" Aycan wails ten minutes after the break. I'm thoroughly done in. I've weathered their rage over a mistake on the answer key and a couple of long, silly disputes about whether it's fair for them to know that scary and frightening mean the same thing and that careless is the opposite of careful. I'm exhausted and frazzled, but I want to encourage Aycan. Three months ago, she was one of the noisy, boisterous bunch and suddenly she's joined the quiet and attentive camp; I can see that she's starting to get it. God knows what happened, but now that it has, I want to keep it going. I push the CD player a little closer to her -- and manage to disconnect the plug from the socket yet again.

After this, try as I might, I can't get the class back under control. I bang on the table, I clap my hands, I raise my voice. The third time I start to explain what I'm going to do -- let the CD play at low volume in the background while we tackle the reading section until we get back to where we were in the listening exam -- Coskun interrupts me with a noisy, superfluous question -- "Teacher, what are you DOING?" -- and suddenly something inside me snaps and I lose it. Big-time.

It's as though I'm standing next to myself, another person entirely. I watch in awe as waves of sound bellow out of my mouth. "I HAVE HAD IT! I AM SICK AND TIRED OF YOUR CHILDISH NONSENSE! DON'T YOU GET THAT I'M TRYING TO HELP YOU? NOW, WILL YOU SHUT UP AND LISTEN? OR DO YOU SERIOUSLY WANT TO FAIL THIS CLASS AND STAY HERE ALL SUMMER LONG?" My eyes flash fire, my hands are clenched in fists, smoke is billowing from my nose and ears. I'm Moses brandishing the tablets. I'm God straight out of the Old Testament loosing the fateful lightning from my terrible swift sword.

Heads bow over test papers. Hands pick up pencils. Every single one of the students catches my drift even if they don't understand every nuance of my language. For the remainder of the class, everyone works in comparative silence. Nobody, me included, wants a repeat performance from Scary Mary.

As I dismiss the class, my heart breaks to see all my good students scurry out of the classroom, their eyes down. It's so unfair: they weren't to blame, but they got a good dose of my rage just the same.

I've got to start practicing my yoga breathing again. We've only got three more weeks until the end of term, but I'll need it. Not necessarily for teaching, but for the next time someone whines about lucky teachers and their three-month summer holidays.

Working Girls

The girls were all in their early twenties, some tall, some short, all Asian. They were walking in front of my daughter and me, a little awkward in their short skirts and high heels, swinging their arms, talking. A middle-aged woman on the opposite side of the road raked them with her eyes as she passed. She scowled and pulled her headscarf a little further down on her head.

"They're so pretty," my daughter whispered. I felt a pang. Fat lot of good their beauty was doing them.

"Those shoes must hurt," I ventured. We stared at their feet. You couldn't run in shoes like that. You couldn't kick a ball or hike up a hill or jump up and down.

The girls turned the corner and disappeared into a house that we still think of as the Khans'. The Khans are an elderly Pakistani couple from the U.K., very refined, well educated and generous. Earlier this year I got a call from Mrs. Khan who told me that they had decided to stay in England this year and rent out their house. Had we by chance seen the new tenants?

As it happened, we'd run into the new tenants a few days earlier when they were moving in. "What are they like?" Mrs. Khan wanted to know. "Are they a family?"

Neither my husband nor I had the courage to tell them that their house had been rented to a group of prostitutes and a couple of thuggish looking men who seemed to be their escorts. They were only in the house for a few days. I saw some of the girls at the local swimming pool a few times, but they never returned my greetings.

Now the Khans' house was being rented again. Two or three times we saw scary-looking men standing outside in the garden, smoking, thuggish fellows who looked like they carried knuckle dusters and guns and had no qualms about using them. The girls seemed to come and go freely, but when they passed people on the street, they never looked them in the eye.

I have complicated feelings about what these girls do for a living. On one hand, it incenses me when people treat them with disrespect; on the other, I'm convinced there must be better ways for them to earn money. Clearly, there will always be a demand for what they offer, but I know that if this world were more just, these girls would be able to find better employment. If they had been born into a just world with plenty of reasonable vocational options, but still found prostitution to their liking, I could breathe a sigh of relief and leave these young women to their fate. But that is not the case, is it? Many of these girls have been born into real poverty, with no education, no guidance, and no prospects. The current world slump has made a difficult situation impossible, but the 'nightclubs' here are always looking for fresh talent.

A few months ago, there was a flash flood and the bottom floor of the Khans' house was flooded. The Khans didn't have the new tenants' phone number, so they asked my husband to go over and see how bad the damage was.

"Were the girls okay?" I asked when he got back.

"They looked okay. They didn't look like anyone was holding them there against their will." That has been my biggest worry, so it was a little reassuring. From time to time, a different group of prostitutes comes to our local supermarket in a garishly pink van decorated with lurid purple flowers. They are noisy and shameless and full of life, and I can't help being a little cheered: they are obviously well fed and at least they look happy.

A few days ago, my daughter and I ran into a fresh batch of girls on our way to buy raisins. The girls were wearing newish-looking clothes of cheap, shiny material, teetering on their high heels, working hard not to step in potholes. I felt their eyes on us. I wondered if any of them would have liked to be on the way to buy raisins with their mothers, trying to decide what kind of cookies to bake.

As we passed them, the girls grew quiet. Girls hardly older than our eldest daughter who is now at university. Girls who could so easily be my wonderful students from former Soviet bloc countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan. Who could be spending their days attending classes, going shopping with friends, visiting each other to swap notes and gossip.

"Good evening," I called out over my shoulder. But the girls kept their eyes on the ground and if they heard me, they gave no sign.

A Fatal Encounter

We almost missed it at first. It was trying to crawl over a low stone wall into a field full of weeds, stone and rubble.

"Snake!" my husband yelled, rolling down the car window. My daughter and I leaned over to look and there it was, long and brown, like a ribbon of flowing mud.

"Brown means poisonous, doesn't it?" my daughter said. We nodded, enthralled as the snake fell back into the road, then coiled to try again.

"It's so beautiful," my husband breathed. We all watched, fascinated, as the snake uncoiled itself slowly, trying to feed its body over the wall. "Watch how it climbs up that wall -- amazing!"

It really was amazing. I've had it explained to me -- how snakes are able to climb straight up walls -- but I still find it magical. Once in Japan, I tried to pry a snake off a wall with a stick. I thought it would be easy to wedge the stick under the snake and send it flying, but it was as though the snake, which continued to slither effortlessly up the wall, was welded to the surface. My friend and I watched as the snake -- all of two feet long -- poured itself up the smooth plaster wall, not even seeming to notice my stick. My friend, whose room the snake had just disappeared into, was less thrilled than I was, though she did agree with me that there would be fewer mice to plague her at night.

The brown snake was little over a foot long and it was having less success with the low stone wall it was trying to negotiate. It made a third, then a fourth attempt, but fell back into the gutter each time.

"We'd better leave it," I said. I'd noticed a man watching us, no doubt wondering what we were all staring at.

But it was too late. The man had spotted the snake and he was walking over to it. We heard him call out in Turkish. He picked up a stick and before we could say anything, began to whack at the snake. The snake recoiled and tried to get away, but the man was too fast for it. We watched in horror as the snake made a vain attempt to escape, wriggling wildly every time the man brought down his stick, then finally lay still.

"It was our fault," my daughter said softly as we drove away. "If we hadn't stopped to look at it, the snake would have made it over the wall and the man wouldn't have seen it."

We felt so sorry for the snake, we could hardly respond to this. True, the snake was poisonous, but it hadn't been in the man's house or even in his garden; it had been minding its own business, heading for the field where it would no doubt have lived to a ripe old snake age, feeding on rodents and bird eggs.

A few weeks later, we saw another brown snake as we drove along a mountain road, past a field of granite in an olive grove surrounded by banks of pastel-yellow mustard flowers. There were no humans around, but we slowed down -- just to be on the safe side -- then watched as the snake poured itself into a large rock, disappearing safely into a deep crevice.

We hope it lives to a ripe old age -- and never meets any people.

Ingrate From The Land Of Dreams

"You're from California?" the girl on the bus says, her eyes wide, her voice thick with admiration. "I've always wanted to go to California! What is it like?"

Questions like this always make me squirm. California is too big and diverse to sum up in one sentence. "Well, my hometown is a lot like this," I say, gesturing at the eucalyptus and pepper trees outside.

"Is Hollywood like this?" she wants to know.

I tell her that Hollywood is hot and crowded, that there are too many cars and too much noise. But I can still see the stars in her eyes.

"You must have been to -- where was it? -- Universal City," she says breathlessly. "What is it like?"

I feel silly. I can barely remember Universal City. "It was very nice."

We pass a sprawling low-roofed house with a tile roof. It's surrounded by a bank of lantana and a bougainvillea with bright magenta blossoms grows up over the arched gateway. If it weren't for the signs in Turkish, we could easily be in my hometown. All of a sudden I feel odd: a little homesick, a little unappreciative. Sometimes I almost feel like I'm throwing away a gift, living abroad for so long when I come from a place that so many people dream of visiting.

I get off the bus and head for my favorite charity shop. The staff here are exclusively expatriate British women and most of the time they ignore me, but today the ladies behind the counter are in a talkative mood. "Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?" one of them wants to know. I tell her.

"Oh, California! Lucky you!"

Her friend nods. "But I'll tell you where I've always wanted to go: New York."

I blink at this. "I lived in New York for a year."

She wants to hear all about it, so I tell her a little about the noise, the fantastic restaurants, museums, and shops, the incredible energy, and the three case-hardened locks on my steel-framed apartment door.

The woman who thinks California is swell frowns at that. She says that another place she'd really love to visit is Las Vegas.

At this, I have to smile. "Umm, I once spent a summer in Las Vegas actually."

The woman looks a little skeptical. "Really?"

So I tell her about the big, flashy casinos, the dazzling neon lights, how I was too cheap to gamble, but was thrilled with the all-you-can-eat breakfasts for less than two dollars. Both women narrow their eyes at this. If you could put a thought bubble over their heads, it would read What kind of idiot spends a summer in Las Vegas and never gambles?

"You never gambled at all?" the first woman asks in a voice tight with incredulity.

"Once, but I felt cheated when I realized I'd blown fifty cents, so I never did it again."

They laugh, wrongly believing this to be a joke. "But the Nevada desert is really beautiful," I tell them.

The first woman shakes her head. "If I ever go to Las Vegas, I'll never see anything but the inside of a casino!" she assures me.

Another British woman has been listening to our conversation. "You know the city I've always wanted to visit?" she says breathlessly. "Miami!"

At this, I almost burst out laughing. If I were back home, I'd be looking out for the man from Candid Camera.

"Ooh, I know why -- Miami Vice!" one of the other women coos.

"I've never seen Miami Vice," I tell them, unable to help myself. "But I spent a year in Miami when I was a teenager."

I don't blame them for the quick looks they traded back and forth. If I were them, I wouldn't believe me either.

Passed It

"You've got a new student here for the test," Keiko whispered, "and just wait until you get a load of him!"

I leaned forward. "Why? What's wrong with him?" I whispered back.

"He's eighty if he's a day!" Keiko rolled her eyes. "He's waiting for you in the lounge. Though seriously, I don't know what you can do for him." She handed me a test paper. "Just explain it in Japanese if he doesn't understand."

I found Mr. Yanagigawa in the lounge, wearing a stern expression and a grey suit. Keiko definitely hadn't exaggerated his age: with his wrinkled face and white hair, he looked at least eighty years old. He scowled up at me when I walked over to him. I introduced myself and invited him to come with me to the examination room. He understood me, but once I'd seated him and given him the test paper, he waved away my explanations with a terse, "I understand."

Twenty minutes later, I came back for his completed test paper. The system at our school was that every prospective student took a simple grammar test, then, if she passed it, a harder one. No matter what the student's score was, an interview was then conducted, after which the student was placed in the appropriate class.

"Have you finished?" I asked gently.

Mr. Yanagigawa frowned and handed me his paper. "I'll be right back," I said, and went off to mark it. Halfway out of the classroom, I stopped. A quick glance had shown me that he'd gotten the first ten questions right. I read through the next group of questions and saw that he'd answered every one correctly. "Umm...I think you'll need to take our next test," I told him. Mr. Yanagigawa shrugged and grunted his assent.

Back at Keiko's desk I brandished the paper. "Look at this! He might be eighty, but he's nailed this test!"

Keiko blinked as she gaped at Mr. Yanagigawa's test paper. "My God, that's incredible!"

"Mm," I said. "Looks like he'll need the hard one." Wordlessly, Keiko handed me a copy.

"Interesting man, isn't he?" I couldn't resist commenting. "What did he put down under Occupation?"

Keiko pulled out his application form and frowned at it. "Retired." She raised an eyebrow. "He'll never get through the second half of the test!"

"Well, we'll soon find out, won't we?"

Keiko sighed. "Even if he does pass it, there's no way he'll be able to speak English." She examined her fingernails. "I guess he's retired so he needs some kind of hobby."

There was nothing I could say to that. Keiko was probably right. She wasn't being ageist in assuming that Mr. Yanagigawa's English skills would be limited. Thanks to wartime anti-American and anti-British propaganda, few Japanese people his age knew more than the most basic English. During the war years, English language education wasn't only discouraged, it was strictly forbidden. English loan words were purged from Japanese and people were imprisoned or punished severely simply for possessing English language textbooks. Most of our older students who had been children or adolescents during the war years seldom made it to the intermediate level. The fact that Mr. Yanagigawa knew as much English as he did was amazing -- and intriguing.

I took the next exam sheet back to Mr. Yanagigawa and told him I'd be back in fifteen minutes.

Barely ten minutes later, Keiko called me. "He's finished," she murmured, handing me his paper. I sat down with the answer key and Mr. Yanagigawa's completed test paper. He'd gotten every single question right. Even some of our better students didn't get every single question right.

Mr. Yanagigawa was sitting in the lounge, his back straight as a rod, his white head held high. He looked up as I approached. I held out his completed test paper. "You are obviously very good at English," I began, but he waved away my comments.

"I'd like to ask you some questions now --" I started to say, but Mr. Yanagigawa frowned and jerked his elbow back to look at his wristwatch.

"I'm sorry, but I'll have to come back another day for the interview," he said in perfect, hardly-accented English. "I've got a meeting in Ichigaya and I really have to attend it."

My jaw dropped as I watched Mr. Yanagigawa stride out of the lobby and vanish through the front door past an astonished Keiko. He never did come back for the interview, but he really didn't need to: I doubt there was anything we could have taught him.

The Patience Of A Saint

"Teacher," Sevge asks me after class just as I'm packing up my things. "What is mean Cheeses ebb?"

All I can do is stare, open-mouthed. Sevge has a habit of hitting me with non sequiturs, usually right in the middle of a teaching point. Last week she wanted me to mark an exercise on the conditional when I was trying to explain past continuous and simple past to the class. The week before, she wanted me to explain the lyrics of a particular song just after I'd taken attendance. "Is it a kind of cheese?" I ask her now, stacking my books into a neat pile.

She shakes her head. "Cheeses ebb."

"Where did you find this expression?" I ask, unplugging the CD player.

She blinks. "Teacher, you say!"

Her classroom companion Onur nods. "You say every time," he agrees. "Cheez us webbed."

I wrack my brain for what this could mean. I have no memory whatsoever of any class discussion of dairy products. "Were we talking about cheese in class?"

They frown at me, then shake their heads.

I slide my CDs into my backpack and erase the white board, trying to buy time. I have no idea what they're talking about. It's been a trying day and a very difficult class. "When did I say it?"

Onur looks embarrassed. "You say when ask leave early. When Aziz go toilet three time. When Beyza come lessons late and sleeping."

"When Abdullah forget book," Sevge adds. "You say three times today!"

I shake my head and sidle toward the door. "Could you say it again?"

"Cheez uz webbed!" Onur repeats, wringing his hands and casting his eyes heavenward in a credible, if highly unflattering, imitation of yours truly.

I slap my forehead in sudden recognition. "Jesus wept!"

They both nod. "What is mean?"

I give up and put my books and CD player back down. "Well, you know Jesus, the Christian prophet, right?" They don't understand, so I draw a cross on my notebook and they both nod. I point to the ceiling. "Sometimes when I'm having a hard time in this class, I imagine Jesus is looking down at me and he's crying a little for me." They stare at me, clearly mystified and I don't blame them one bit. My cheeks are flaming at how ridiculous I sound.

"So I say Jesus wept," I conclude lamely. "Sort of the way you say Allah, allah when you can't understand something and you feel frustrated."

"Cheezes webbed like Allah, allah?" Sevge confirms just as Aycan and Abdullah come back into the class for Abdullah's book.

"Teacher, you say!" Abdullah comments, flinging his arms wide apart and rolling his eyes at the ceiling. "Cheezes webbed:What is mean?"

Thankfully, Onur and Sevge explain this time.

"Absolutely!" yells Aycan, whose voice only comes in top volume. "You always say!"

Onur and Sevge nod. "Absolutely. You say every time, teacher!"

"Cheezes webbed!" shrieks Abdullah in a worrying falsetto. "Absolutely!"

"Teacher, what is mean absolutely?" Sevge hisses. "How spell?"

"A-B-S-- I'll tell you tomorrow," I say, desperate for a cup of coffee and a sit down.

As I push open the door, I hear all four students parroting "Absolutely!" and "Jesus wept!" I had no idea I used these expressions so often.

"Sheet!" Abdullah calls joyfully over his shoulder as they leave the classroom just as my boss is strolling past. "You say sheet every time teacher!" The others echo their agreement.

Jesus wept.