I'm not sure what the girl did exactly. The students talk all the time when we do - we the teachers - and the solution that seems to be more popular at my school is to overpower them. Small speaker boxes slung on the hip are very popular. A wire runs up and around the ear to the mouth and you're your own P.A. system. Right then though, me and the kids, we were talking about introductions. [If Suzy hires Paul in a dark alley to kill her lover Adam's fiancé, who will
perform the introduction when Suzy and Adam meet Paul in the Chuck E Cheese to pay him?] Earlier that day Mrs. Khang had lost her stick, all teachers carry what-are-usually-bamboo-sticks-but-not-always, and she'd jury rigged a new one out of about five long wooden chopsticks held together with an elastic band. I think it was because of the composite nature of her new instrument that it made such a fantastic rapping sound on the girl's forhead. Students, please, I've never met corporal punishment in the classroom before, you must introduce us. But in the interest of transparency, they did tell us this would happen. And on the subject of disipline...
As I walked to lunch a dozen boys rushed past me, or nearly anyway. "There's a fight," they said, excited in exactly the same way that the boys back in Canada would get excited about a fight in grade nine. "Some grade sevens are fighting!" And they were off again, a machine gun of sandals slapping the stairs. I surpressed the middle school boy in me and walked down.
My school is two buildings joined by a bridge running from second floor to second floor. Looking down, there were about a hundred students milling in the courtyard. No fight though. I'd missed it. I didn't missed the fact that I was the only teacher present. From the windows all the way up both buildings spectators heads poked out. Then, in the absence of a show, they decided to lend a hand to the spectacle. Each room's supply of chalk was shuttled to the window and bombed onto the mob, which quickly broke up under the onslaught. I considered cutting myself a switch and restoring order. I also considered smearing the damp chalk lying on stones across my face and leading the children to capture several burger restaurants I've had my eye on and at least one PC cafe (to keep the soldiers happy). Instead I compromised and went to lunch.
But this was all on Friday. Ages ago.
I was late for that basketball game I mentioned before. Meet in front of the Outback Steak House at one. Is that so hard? A bus, a subway and a poor estimation of my own travel time later, I arrived at about quarter after. Maybe even later. I didn't have a watch, I only knew that there was no one waiting in front of the OSH. It took fourty-five minutes and a very generous guided walk to the wrong middle school before I was sitting in a dark PC cafe wishing I smoked because if you looked at some of these guys you'd think they were running intell for a Mission Impossible-style operation instead of power leveling their friend's Tauren Shaman. Trying to find every school in a three mile radius I instead came upon the message cancelling basketball all together that day. And so it was that instead of breaking in my new silver shoes that day, my friend Adam and I connected long distance via internet, caught up a bit, and got very mean spirited in our handling of punk ass bitches South Korean-style. Which is to say that we won the competative online video games we played, but please, I prefere to call it saving the world. I will say that we were forceful only in our actions and avoided engaging in the juvenile name calling that is unfortunately prolific in the genre.
I decided to find a different way home than the way I'd found myself there. Walking to the bus there was a small crowd gathered around a man in a very fine suit. Curled into the fetal position, he was so small, like a child in a deep blue tie with wrinkles on his face. He fought the police when the woke him up, and when the handcuffed him and when they picked up him and lifted him to and then into the back of the car. Drunk, alone and on the street by five in the afternoon, I wondered what he was so sad about. What could someone have to be sad about with a suit that was so nice?
I found my target bus stop and went foraging. For one thousand won I enjoyed three things on a stick. They were hot and soft and like a soft bread that sat in a soup for flavour. The vendor pulled one out for himself as well, and we ate them in solidarity under his plastic tent. We nodded a lot, and sometimes I would say "jwoi-yo" which is Korean for "good." We drank the same soup that the bread had come in, and I think had a moment. I was feeling pretty good about humanity when I got on the bus, which turned out to be the wrong bus. There were a few desperate minutes between being kicked off that bus at the end of its line and finding the proper route, but I kept my head and made sure nobody saw me cry.
South Korea, I've got you all figured out.
