An Object Lesson

I tutor English for students (and grown ups).

I also tutor Liberal Studies.

I’d like to think I’m good at it, and I’d like to think my students have fun.

I try.

Part of what I do is to explain/encourage the importance of being a good student, if for no other reason than getting through school as quickly as possible and ensuring a smoother career path than, say, tutoring English while pushing 50.

As I often tell my students, my job is to help them be better students (and people) than I was (am).

And sometimes I am lucky enough to be able to illustrate the how and why not only of English excellence, but academic idiocy.

Recently a student was working on the following assignment, where you look at pictures and describe what happened.

I explained to young [name removed at lawyers' insistence], I could assure him he was a good kid and a good student, because he did the right thing and wrote the correct story of what happened to Peter and Francis while playing badminton.

I told him I could assure him because when I was his age, if I had the assignment, the story would have been different:

Peter and Francis are two young schoolboys in Damascus.  

They wave cheerily at an NSA satellite, which signals a drone strike on them, thinking they are terrorists.

Luckily, the bomb gets caught in a tree.

Peter and Francis want to see what landed in the tree.

They have no idea it is an explosive device that will kill them. 

Suddenly Francis hears a noise behind him that sounds like the wings of the Angel of Death.

Just when it seems all hope is lost, the Dove of Peace swoops down to pluck the bomb from the tree, saving Peter and Francis.

But it turns out the dove actually works for the CIA, and drops the bomb on them.  

I also told him that he was much smarter than me because even if he thought of such a terrible story, he would never have written it down, put his name on it and handed it in.

Whereas I did that sort of thing all the time.

Because it amused me.

No matter how bad the resultant grade was.

I didn’t care, and I still don’t. 

Because if my English teachers had the chance to ask me “Where do you think that attitude will get you in life?” again, I can say “Christmas dinner in Tokyo with a retired porn star.”

Among other things.

It’s been worth it.