Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Life=Happiness Music?

I forgot a key story from the day Matt came to school:

As Matt and I walked down the stairs outside of the English room, we came upon a student of mine, who yelps "Oh!" upon seeing us and stands transfixed for a bit with his feet on different steps in between strides before deciding to stay and chat.

This is a profoundly strange kid. I love this kid because he always tries to talk to me outside class, even if what he says makes no sense at all, which is most all of the time. Often I get the feeling he is just speaking to me in disjointed sentences directly stripped from his textbook and their context therein. He also wears a printed hawaiian shirt underneath his school uniform every day for some reason. (As an interesting side note, it's likely that all of the best students in my oral communications class are off-kilter in one way or another; the average Japanese kid is rather unwilling or afraid to participate on an individual level, let alone talk to me outside of class. Only the kids who just don't care are fully comfortable speaking out)

So I ask the kid, "What's up?"
"AH! Ahhh....yes," he replies, fully in agreement with whatever I said in his head, "Good job!"
"What? Good job?" I ask, "I said 'what's up'; I'm asking how you are."
"Yes, yes, yes!" he exclaims in glee, as if to let us know that there is nothing he is more keenly aware of than this exchange, his eyes open wide. He looks quickly from side to side and, leaning in as if to impart to us a great secret, he begins in a whisper:
"Life..."
- I crane forward to catch these seemingly vital words -
"...is happiness music."
Finishing, he nods his head in satisfaction, basking in his own beneficence after laying this deep insight at our feet.
I am less impressed, "Dude, what the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh, oh oh oh!" he replies, and with a triumphant flourish of his hands, exclaims, "Good luck!"

And, such blessed with his benediction on our way to enlightenment, we stand stock still as he brushes past us up the stairs, mission accomplished: another two souls saved.

I am just really amused, since I am used to this sort of regular insanity from students. Matt is rather confused through this whole conversation, and I have to repeat it for him to confirm that it did in fact happen, and that was definitely what the kid said. He made sure to write it down, so this wisdom could be preserved and passed on.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love how you can just say whatever the hell you want to these boneheads in English and no one knows otherwise... thats classic... you must laugh alot each day at these kids accents, thats fantastic bro...