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Clara #1 is eight years old, a former denizen of my kindergarten homeroom last semester. She's the one with the awesome gap-toothed smile, whose mom never came to our events and is presumably under the impression that 'school' is synonymous for 'babysitter'. I am convinced that there is no way you could possibly meet this kid and not instantly fall in love with her.

Clara's been sick lately; she's fallen victim to one of the virulent strains of flu that courses throughout Seoul despite the overadoption of SARS masks in this country. Last week, Clara threw up a banana all over the classroom floor. Then, unphased, she took another banana from her backpack and immediately started eating it. "No more bananas, Clara," I had to tell her. "Fuck those poisonous bananas. Stop eating the banana, okay?"

She convinced me that usually bananas are fine. "Not sick, banana okay; I'm sick... BLECH!!" She pantomimed vomiting and ate some more banana.

Yesterday she came into class, tears streaming down her face as she coughed unabatedly. She couldn't write because she was too busy coughing, and eventually she started retching and throwing up. Again. Two times. Yellow like banana. The other kids were captivated with the air of squeamish fascination that children worldwide savor and save for new and abominable scenes of life, like dead birds and spaghetti. I was mildly horrified myself, and wholly unimpressed with the show.

"Dammit Clara, you're sick! Go home and sleep, and NO BANANAS. Tell mommy that Chris teacher thinks you might die, alright? And you'd better not be going to piano today!"

Clara assured me between spews and coughs that mommy did, in fact, want her to go to piano. Intolerable! So I leaned out the door and yelled for Supervision, who escorted Clara out to clean her up and hopefully get her some sorely-needed medical attention. Minutes later she returned, which was puzzling because surely she was in no shape to learn about which animals walk and which ones fly. And she was still coughing up a storm.

Two more upheavals later and my suspicions were confirmed: Clara was not in a learning mindset. She was not capable of playing piano. All she was capable of was redecorating my classroom (well, Mike's... heh heh heh) one putrid splash at a time. She was violently ill and needed to sleep off this madness.

We called mommy. Mommy was not happy that her surrogate parentals had failed to magically fix her child, but Clara was heading home regardless. There's a hint here, a lesson about parenting and no longer forcing your virally wracked kid to play piano and learn English just so you can go to work. Education is not a substitute for responsibility. We dig your kids, but it's kinda your job to keep them alive.

And stop with the bananas already.

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Clara #2 is older, more adept in the sly mannerisms of using English to piss me off. She's lazy and doesn't do her homework. Her favorite word is "Why."

Me: "So, you see, jazz music is important because it helped black people and white people get along in a time of segregation."

Clara: "Why?"

Me: "Well, they played music together. And it helped them learn that they were all people with similar interests."

Clara: "Why?"

Me: "Clara, shut up. There is no melting pot for someone like you."

Clara: "But whyyyy?"

Of course, she doesn't really care what the answer is. But she's entertaining - Clara adds spice to her class, when she's not asking 'why'.

Today at about 5:20 a pizza showed up at Herald. The delivery guy claimed that a "Clara" had ordered it. Upon inspection, Clara was not in her first class. She wasn't at school. Clara's moving to America with her mom, you see, and all month she's been vague about her departure date. I always just figured she'd disappear, like so many kids before her: leaving one night and just never coming back. They all vanish without saying goodbye.

It struck me that this was Clara's goodbye: a pizza prank call for her last non-day of school. She had a cell phone. She had the mischievous nature. She was moving away. And it was a damn small pizza: pizza in Korea is wildly overpriced and undersized, a gourmet item for the Western wannabes with deep pockets. Oh Clara, you devil.

So I laughed and laughed and was fully prepared to buy the pizza myself, when she showed up in a flurry with her mom to pay the disgruntled delivery boy. She had skipped her first class and showed up at school just in time to eat pizza and watch Narnia with me, since she knew damn well I wouldn't make her do any actual work on her last day. And so we ate a pizza and a box of chicken wings and Clara made some acute notations about changes from the original book - "Teacher... why is there tunnel in the beaver house? THERE IS NO TUNNEL IN STORY!!" - and computer animation - "Aslan is not real, yes? He is special computer lion. Teacher ... ... *vacant pause, as if assembling a logical leviathan* ... ... I like his hair!"

The last bell rang and I had to stay at school for an extra hour because she wanted to see Aslan respawn, and I've always heard it's bad luck to refuse final requests.

Spoilers: The White Witch gets eaten by Aslan. Clara goes to America without handing in the essay she promised me from a month ago. Neither ending surprises me.

Posted by Chris at 06:34 AM >> Commentations (4)