Let's give'm somethin' to talk about Capitulo 2

As I have left my former entry unfinished, I am compelled to share a final handful of uncanny events that have taken place between my students and I. For those of you who have not entered my colegio, I am kind of a big deal. My reputation draws countless high-fives, shameless expressions of adoration, and an endless ration of hugs belted out to me as though the children were on an assembly line. It is hard to be humble when one is as great as I. 

Insofaras my popularity is expanding, so are my ploys to trap my students in verbal conundrums. As if it were not bad enough that they are forced to speak a foreign language with me, I am apt to unroll a slew of deductive fallacies, non sequitors, paradoxes, ethical compromises and palindromes--that's right, palindromes. To sum them up into one Spanish word, tonterías comes to mind. Allow me to explain while you passively scroll by some unrelated photos of different parts of Spain during Semana Santa and all its weekly wonders.

It may help to know that I have certain portions of the day when I speak with students alone or in pairs to boost their English skills. These times are precious to me. These are the times that try men's (or children's) souls. The standard "who is your best friend" or "who is your favorite teacher" questions don't exactly plug the brain drain on my end, so, naturally, I am savvy to shake things up a bit. 

The best friend question may at times, depending on my thirst for fifth to sixth grade gossip, be followed with a "who is your worst enemy" followup. Many are all too eager to confess their playground fueds or sassy scorn toward their classmates. I reassure them of my blacklist of enemies back in the United States and curtly end with a "I owe a lot of people money back home" comment. 

The question regarding their favorite teacher is met with either the presentation of an impossible ethical situation or a correctional measure with a threatening undertone. I size the child's mental toughness up the moment they take a seat and make contact with my shark-like, vacuous eyes. Spines either stiffen after our encounters or return to a flaccid, linguine-state following a walk in the garden of my turbulence. 

For one 'favorite' is a term of supremacy. It is a lot like the Highlander tagline: There can only be one! Based on this axiom, I am morally obliged to present them with a situation which forces the decision out of them when they tell me of two or more teachers being their favorite. I hit them with a lifeboat-esque type of question. "If said Professor A is hanging on to the edge of a cliff facing certain death while simulataneously Professor B is facing the same turn of cruel fate, and, what's more, there is only time to save one, then who would it be?"

Once they tell me their choice, we make a pact that I will not tell the other whose life was deemed less valuable. It is my way of debriefing them, one could say. Although, I occassionally have a student who is psychologically unfit to make such a dire decision, resulting in both of their favorites plummeting to their untimely deaths. 

On the other hand, if the student has a favorite reigning undisputed in their mind already, I swiftly crush that dillusion. No sooner than their tongue flicks the first syllable of a professor's name that isn't mine, I change the tempo of the room like a SWAT team flash-bang grenade. My face goes from the jovial, welcoming teacher to that of brash, Stalin-grade austerity. One can feel the temperature of the room change.  My eyes center and I bring all I am into a laser beaming gaze. Only then do I correct their misspoken folly. It is actually an emotionally taxing thing for me, too. It takes a lot out of a guy to teach proper adoration. Now I know how Kim Jong-un must feel; poor guy. 

 "Listen up, from here on out, I do not care what you think you know or who got to you first, but your choice has now changed," I tell them. Then I pronounce myself as their favorite teacher. There is no other option. I reassure them there is nothing else out there but empty wasteland and hunger. There is no choice, really; only acceptance. Resistance is futile when you are eight years old.

I am not always so severe. One girl was nervous before her Cambridge exam and I decided to make a point of placing faith in her and attempted to instill some faith in herself. I told her, "Look, you are not going to grow up and be one of those people walking around in life having pianos fall on their head out of the clear, blue sky. You have done the work, your English level is high and now all you have to do is execute." She looked at me, then Violeta, the real teacher, and cracked a smile out of the side of her mouth. 

I asked if she understood, but I think both her and the teacher may have gotten lost at the 'pianos falling out of the sky' part. Nonetheless, I assured her she was not ever going to self-victimize and I promised I would explain in greater detail later. 

I am not alone in forcing these pobrecitos to perform mental aerobics in such a mongrel language such as English. Another auxiliar (who will remain nameless) has his own approach and respective sense of humor, however unhinged it may be. We share the same room during our time alone with the students at times and we cannot help but get involved on each other's homefront. He takes the flank, I come at them with an impenetrable phalanx of verbage. 

The other day we were discussing the ailments of watching the television while sitting too close. My accomplice mentioned that he was guilty of watching the television so dreadfully close in the past that a cutting-edge team of medical experts had to replace his eyes with the eyes of a saiga--the Eurasian steppe antelope, not to be confused with the 12-guage shotgun. We had to assure them they were doing this sort of thing these days of course. By the end of the conversation, we had reasonably deduced that sitting too close to the TV may result in an eye transplant with Eurasian steppe mammals. 

Besides the verbal ploys we spring on them, I would say the students like us. When I am not telling them my favorite tapa is human meat, I try and get the jump on them by violently springing out from behind doors. On one occassion, I had an actual respectable funcionario (state-employed teacher) help place a trash can in front of a closet door I was hiding in only to make it all the more violent when I came crashing out sending the trash can off like it were a balistic missile across the room. I have even seen one girl grow weak in the knees and hit the deck. She is definitely one of my success stories I take home to hang on the hat rack. 

The topic of soccer often comes up with the boys. When asked who is my favorite team, I deliberately butcher their names and then dismay when they tell me they do not exist. Why didn't anyone ever tell me that Atlético de Barcelona, my favorite team of all time, never existed? It simply cannot be! Oh well, I am not as bad as another friend of mine who is a gym coach at his instituto. He has outright told his students "soccer is a communist sport" because there are ties. Oh, how we attempt to culturally imperialize these Spanish students to a newly depraved degree of Americanism. They will be crippled by obesity and rolling about Walmart while heavily breathing and asses planted in electric scooters soon enough.