It no longer baffles me when I'm asked on a weekly basis by colleagues when I am going to get married and have babies. But apparently my life has become so pitiful that even my students are giving me advice on my personal life.
Take one of my 7th graders for instance. He advised me after school today, in all seriousness, that I should marry John Cena. "Ms. Shyu, Ms. Shyu, because, John Cena is a very nice man. Really. He is. He'll make a good husband. He's a good wrestler too. Please, will you marry him?"
Perhaps I would have taken his request a little closer to heart if he didn't proceed to jump around the room, waving his hand across his face, chanting, "You can't see me! You can't see me!" Apparently that is the very nice John Cena's tagline.
But I did take the opportunity to puncture the 12-year old's dreams by letting him in on a secret that those entertainment wrestling shows on TV he and his peers watched with devotion, were fake. This comment did not seem to deter him from running around the classroom, describing how he and his brother were going to wrestle and throw furniture around the house like John Cena and the Undertaker and goodness knows who else. So I tried to break it down a little more clearly for my student, who happens to have mental retardation.
"You know, the TV show owners, they write down what the wrestlers are going to do. It's like a TV show or a movie. It's all made up."
This didn't sway him. Or stop him from explaining how his dad and brother stole his wrestling belt from his locker so now he has to toss them from the edge of the ring. So I kept going.
"Hey, you know, those wrestlers practice for days and days on what they're going to do. They try really hard not to hurt each other. It's really like a dance. You know, wrestling is like ballet."
That got his attention a little better. "Like ballet?" he asked. I thought I got him. Perhaps I will end unnecessary juvenile violence on the Navajo Nation after all.
"Yeah, like ballet. So what you're watching on TV is really like a dance. But what you do at home will hurt, right? Because you don't have coaches telling you how to do your moves the right way, or help you if you get hurt. Because if you do ballet the wrong way, you'll get hurt. And it's the same thing with wrestling. You will get hurt."
He stands by, eyeing me.
"So is wrestling real?
"No."
"Are you going to keep wrestling when you know you're going to get hurt?"
Pause.
"I can't wait to go home, I'm going to lift my auntie's table and then I'm going to break it. And then my brother is going to steal my belt from my locker. Man... I can't wait to fight him..."
wow, this was totally not the post I thought I had found. A great one though. Hilarious, even.
Posted by: sirjorge wwe | July 04, 2008 at 08:40 PM