Quirky

The Island

I must take a ferry to an island on certain days to teach at one of three schools. Two are elementary schools, and one is a junior high school. The elementary schools are on opposite sides in their respective port towns. The two towns do not get along because some twenty years ago there was a bitter battle over local fishing rights. This means that the children from one elementary school won't go to the junior high school on the island. It is in the rival port town and they will instead take a ferry to the mainland, and then ride a bus to another junior high school at which I also teach English. It's all very complicated.

Gathering Seaweed at the Port

The story I shall now tell takes place on this island. At one of the elementary schools, on my first day there, I noticed during lunchtime that some of the children had unusual names. I brought this up with the lunch lady. A nearby 4th grader overheard us. He asked if I thought his name was unusual too. I said no. Then he asked if the boy sitting across from us had an unusual name, or the girl behind him, or the lunch lady. I played along a bit but soon ignored him. His interest in me did not fade at this point. He continued to hound me with questions about how I ate my food. Why for example did I dip my bread in my soup? And how come I drank my 200ml milk box in one go?

Two weeks later I returned to the school for the second time. I did not teach the 4th grade boy that day and was not seated at his table during mealtime. In the afternoon for 5th period the entire school--staff and students--went outside to pick onions. The students numbered around forty, and the principal lined them up in rows. "These onions are important," she said. "We will use them in our school lunches."  Another teacher added that the kids should pick them with care. Wanting to put in my two cents, I said that onions are the most widely eaten vegetable in the world. No one seemed impressed by this knowledge so I slumped back in embarrassment for having opened my mouth.

As the children entered the onions patch they went for the big ones first. They plucked them by their green stalks, and out the vegetables popped from the sheet of black plastic which covered the soil. After a few minutes the students shouted "lizard, lizard." I glanced over and a lizard was running on the plastic in a frenzy, searching for cover. It leapt onto the grass beside the onion patch and moved in my direction. I was going to pick it up and place it in some nearby bushes, but before I could a kid, the boy from before, stomped down on the reptile with his foot. "What are you doing?" I cried out. It was too late. The damage was done. The poor lizard's leg had become mangled. I scooped up the creature and saw that its lower belly was also bleeding. Carefully, I set it beneath the bushes and with a limp, the animal scampered away. The creature I knew would soon be dead, for nature does not make allowances for the weak and crippled.

I went right to the boy and looked him in the eye. I was so furious I did not know what to say. Finally, I asked, "Why did you do that?"

He shrugged and turned away to pick more onions. That made me more furious. I wanted to pull him aside and really let him have it. But with all the other teachers present I decided it better not to make a scene.

"Did you see what that boy did?" I later asked the principal. The kids had already returned to class, and a few of us adults were peeling the brown layer off the onions they had picked.

She nodded. "The lizard will probably be okay."

"I don't think so," I said. And with those words the topic died.

This matter, however, was far from over. The next week I did not return to the elementary school. But I did go to the junior high on the island. I always finish at 3:50 in time to catch the 4:15 ferry. On that day I had it in mind to explore the island rather than go straight home. According to a map I had picked up at the ferry terminal, there was an observation deck somewhere in the green hills that formed the island's interior. I found the trail up, and snapped pictures of the port below. It was oddly quiet, a sharp contrast to the commotion that had taken place when I had arrived that morning on the ferry. Boatloads of seaweed had then lined the waterfront, and locals had sat sorting the fronds from their stalks.

Another trail down led me to behind some houses. I wandered the narrow streets taking pictures of the tightly packed port town. An old lady smiled at me and made conversation. I talked with her about a drama they had filmed on the island in the summer. After we went our separate ways I somehow ended up in a noodle shop that the same woman ran with her husband. The worn, wooden walls were lined with decorative shells, conches and taxidermized fish. The old couple's son was there too, and he was the most talkative of the lot. He told me all manner of things, and asked what I thought of the local kids. "Oh they're really cute, and well behaved," I said.

"Yes. That's because here on the island we make sure they are raised proper. If anyone sees a child doing something wrong they stop and say something. It doesn't matter whose kid it is."

"I see." And then I remembered the boy, and what he had done. I explained to the man how I had failed to set him straight.

"You may have wanted to yell at him," the man said. "But that is not the right approach. It's better to show a child the error of their ways. And with that boy you could have explained that a lizard too has a life, and that life is precious. It doesn't matter if it belongs to an insect or a flower. It's something we should respect and preserve."

Such wisdom, I thought.

Port in the Afternoon

Path Down

Back Street

Puffer Fish

The Story Continues

Another two weeks passed and I was back at the elementary school. I had by then forgotten about the lizard incident and the talk with the man. But when lunch time came around, there I was sitting across from the 4th grade boy. He stared at my goatee and pointed. Why did it have gray hairs, he asked.

"Because I'm getting old," I said. Now it was time for a question of my own. "Last time I was here, we picked onions. And there was that lizard. You never told me. Why did you step on it?"

The boy became quiet. He looked blankly at his lunch tray while I waited for an answer.

"Fine," I said. "Don't tell me, but know this." I next repeated what the man at the noodle shop had told me to say. "Can you understand that?" I finished. The boy nodded. "Good, now eat your lunch."

A moment later I used my chopsticks to remove the shrimp from my bowl of cream soup.

The boy leaned over and asked, "You don't like shrimp?"

"Nope."

"What else don't you like?"

"A lot of things."

"How about dragon meat?"

"It doesn't exist."

"But if it did, would you eat it?"

I gave the prospect a moment's thought. "Yeah, why not. It would probably taste good."

"Yeah, it would huh? I'd eat right off the bone." The boy took an imaginary chunk of dragon limb into his hands and bit at the air. 

That was worth a laugh.

So another quirky episode had played out in the life of Phil the English teacher, and as I reflect on it, I wonder if I've been doing the same thing for too long. A company supervisor had once told me that teachers who stay on for years eventually grow jaded and complacent. Yet among those kids I felt happy. Maybe I am getting older and more gray, but the faces of my students stay the same age. I've taught so many. Perhaps 3,000. And how many have I made laugh with the same jokes and silly gestures? How many have I chased around during a game of tag?  How many odd lunchtime conversations have there been? Those are questions I can't even begin to guess at, but one thing is for certain. It's been a hell of a ride getting to where I now am.

Another Day Ends on the Island