There's one in every year group, the kid who acts like he ate too many fizzy colabottles and stood on his head, the one who clamours for attention and screams out in class at everything and gets away with it (this is Japan, watch, here it goes: win[disci......pline]dow).
In the third grade it's Hiroya, who sat in English the other day rubbing a piece of sandpaper against itself for 20 minutes. He's calmed down a lot though, and so has the second grade's number one cheeky blighter, Shuto. He got gangly and his hero is Henry, so he can't be all bad.
I was talking with Shuto in football practice the other day and he was trying to speak in English, no jokes, no shouting and the crafty bugger didn't even break eye contact to look over my shoulder. He had a bbq or something- that's not the point. Moments later, K-T Komatani Sensei appeared from behind me and said well dones and little by littles to Shuto and I suddenly realised the little fella hadn't been trying to impress me after all. He was hunting bigger game.
K-T stopped and started talking to me in English about a funeral he had to go to and I thought it a little strange for him to stop there, on the way to his car, to tell me that. A little late, again, I clocked his plot. Shuto, fairly bowled over by this demonstration of how it's done, himself impressed, started to tell K-T as much, asking him how he spoke English so fluently. 'Little by little' he said over his shoulder, walking to his car and a funeral.
No comments:
Post a Comment