You Brade Runna

I guess the easiest analogy to explain what I am dealing with on a daily basis would be to say that I feel like Decker in Blade Runner. I am not saying that I running around shooting androids, rather that the colors and the sounds and the hodge-podge of languages seem like images from the film. Much like Decker, I walk around in this world looking for answers and occasionally the ones that I find are those that I least like to hear. The colors, the tastes and the sounds are fine; it is the answers that sometimes disturb.

On the first day I met Solomon he came into the office carrying a long piece of bamboo. I, jokingly, asked him if it was to motivate the students. He responded that it was and gave some confused reading of the idea that to spare the rod is to spoil the child and that discipline was one of the keys to learning. I thought he was joking until I saw that he took the stick to every class that he taught. I also noticed that other teachers carried sticks. Nothing that would not seem akin to a ruler on the knuckles but I still found it alarming. I am a guest here and I can barley get myself around town let alone criticize a culture for committing corporal punishment. If he hit the kids it wasn’t like he was going to cane them . . .

As my week progressed I noticed that I was beginning to have discipline problems in my classes, especially with the boys who, like boys, would rather beat on each other and play video games than study the way English should function and sound. When one finally became so disruptive that I no longer knew what to do, I left the room, had a class of water, returned, grabbed his books and escorted him to the hallway and tried to explain to him that he could come back next time. I may be many things but a babysitter is not one of them.

Friday is my short day as I only have four classes and these don’t start until four pm. I spent the morning drinking coffee by the sea and having a nice walk before finally getting to school and rounding up the supplies that I need in order to teach. This usually takes only about 15-20 minutes so Friday is a very nice way to start to wind down the week.

My first class is a group of total beginners and it is often very frustrating. I can leave that 50 minute session feeling exhausted and wondering if any of my efforts sunk in beyond the depth of a droning ‘blah, blah, blah.” After this it is all gravy.

My next class is all boys and they are a total handful. Today, Stonecold asked to change his name to Paul, which I thought was a very good sign. It took me a moment to explain that Paul doesn’t have an “R” in it and we all thought he should have changed his name to “Skunk,” which is what he was actually called for the rest of the session. The topic was “hobbies” and I tried to get them to think of things that people do in their free time. This was going well but in the back of the class were two boys who kept smashing their desks together. I could give a shit if you don’t want to pay attention, simply be quiet about it. But this was not going to happen and they kept getting louder and louder and I was losing the battle so I decided that the easiest way to solve this problem was to get rid of it. Out they went.

Not so fast white foreigner. The one kid, they say he is a bit slow, did as he was told but the other was not having any thing to do with leaving the classroom. No, young David was going to sit in his chair and if I wanted to take him out of the classroom I was going to have to drag his ass out of there. So much for the idea that little Asian kids are well disciplined. Fill anyone’s head with a bunch of chop-sockey flicks and you know there will be trouble. Teach them all Tai Kwon Do and someone could actually get hurt.

I was about to completely lose it when Lydia came to my rescue and took both kids out of the class. I continued with the idea of what a hobby was and with about ten minutes left the two dissenters came back and sheepishly said: Sorry, teacher. I said I know and I thought that was the end of it. They lined up to go out the door and I wrote some notes about what it was that we tried to cover during the period.

It was at this point that the slower kid, Shawn, erupted and kicked a desk. I was REALLY startled but I simply rose out of the chair (in this class I actually sit down with the kids in the hopes that this will keep them from picking at each other) and headed towards the front of the class. It was then that all of the kids started to scream at me in this cornucopia of English and Korean that someone had/should call Shawn’s parents. As this is happening, he starts tearing into his book bag . . . I am thinking Columbine and figure that some little maladjusted fucknut is going to pop a cap in my sorry ass simply because I sent him out of the room . . . He pulls out a pencil, raises it above his head and slams it, I mean SLAMS it, into his own hand. I fuckin’ couldn’t believe it.

He looked stunned and then he looked like he was going to do it again but the bell rang and everyone left like nothing happened. I tried to stop him on his way out the door but he left and I returned gathered my things and went into the teacher’s offices. By this time I am . . . I don’t know what I was feeling so I went up to Anna, she is the Korean teacher with the best command of the English language, and I said: Do you know Shawn? Well, he just freaked out and tried to shove a fuckin’ pencil trough his hand.

The Canadian seemed horrified that I would use such language. Anna said that he was disturbed. The Canadian said he was mildly autistic and that he is prone to such outbursts. I am still horrified. “Are you OK?” they ask. “I’m fine. I wasn’t the one who stabbed himself with a pencil.”

So I go outside and have a smoke and try real hard to think about the last time I saw something that messed up. I know that on a few occasions I have done some self destructive shit but it was usually in private when the really serious urges took hold, when my darkest thoughts manifested themselves into a tangible form. Here, some kid totally freaks out and the only way he had for making whatever was pissing him off to stop was to drive a pencil through his hand.

Which brings me back to Bladerunner. Earlier, when I was having coffee, I was writing in my journal and trying to express my amazement at some of the things that I had seen as of late. This was the first time that I had actually written anything in that book since I had arrived and the first thing that caught my mind was when I passed a construction site and saw the trim carpenters building a ladder. Don’t have one on site, build it. I was struck as this is something that would never be done in the states and the ladder appeared well constructed. I don’t know if I remarked about the Bladerunner imagery or not but when I see all of the little shops that cluster the streets that is the image that I think of, especially when Decker was looking to identify the snake scale that he found in the bathtub. The streets are busy and rainy and there is neon everywhere. Pockets of where I live are just like that.

But there is this other scene in the film that also gives pause. It is when Roy has chased Decker to the edge and he finally decides that the right thing to do is to pull Decker up and then he begins to tell Decker all of the things that he has seen with his eyes. He has seen so much and he only wishes that he could see more. He knows that his time is up and he only wants to see more.

Right before this happens, he can feel his body start to fade and in order to stop the pain, he pulls a nail out of a board, no small feat, and drives it through his palm. This allows his hand to move again. The pain granted freedom of motion.

So when I saw the kid put the pencil into his hand I knew it was to kill some kind of pain. Maybe the pain he was going to feel when he got home? Maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t communicate his thoughts. Maybe it just seemed like the only available solution he had. I guess I will never know.

I know that I want to go on seeing things, a variety of things. I simply don’t want to see shit like that. I also don’t want to have to walk into a room with a big stick in order to get children to learn their lessons. Although, lately the idea does seem palatable . . .

Peace,

sh