Apparent Heir

There is a little backstory to follow:

Apparent Heir

Time’s accordion folds,

Trudging the muddy ditches with bare feet we look,

A white litter slaps past on the heels of coolies,

Inside a little boy rides alone,

His armor folds around him, a gilded bronze husk,

Warlord father astride a panting steed, two more at the ready,

Menacingly he eyes his host, his spyglass scans the enemy array,

Ages away, Mother preens and smiles for bootlicking courtesans,

A fecund honeydew veil covers her dissolute eyes,

A sister’s obsequious gapes, another’s oblivious guffaws,

The friendless heir pops the soap bubbles of father’s approval,

Searching his mind’s drainage for warm mother’s embrace,

Seeing only the sticky rice grains in his iron bowl,

Humans trek the sucking road, some fall broken,

The boy bows his head.

I had a run in with little Allowishus this week. Long story short, he dropped the F-bomb in class. It was ignorant and antagonistic. He is 10 years old, grade 5 and has crippled social skills. He is frowny, chubby and pushy and doesn’t seem to communicate well with classmates. I’d had a bad cold and though I was feeling better I wrote on the board, “Teacher is sick today, so …” and drew an arrow up to rule # 4. “Be respectful, be kind.” Two second later, little Al turns to a classmate and says “Fuck you.” I have to think he did it within the context of a private altercation, because I can’t imagine him having listened to me. He rarely does. I asked him, not loudly but firmly, to repeat it. After the second request he says, “I say Fucka.” Out, out NOW! Again, not yelling, but clearly not happy. He refused, and I ended up grabbing him securely by the arm and guiding him to the office, which is thankfully only 30 feet away. The whole thing took like 90 seconds and I was back in class, “OK, Summer, try number one for us.”

I thought about it for a while, he only caught about 30m. of an 80m. period. He came back and with the slightest bow possible, “Sawdee teacha.” This is the standard, most insincere apology humanly possible, and practiced daily by Taiwanese kids towards their foreign teachers. I wasn’t ready to welcome him back yet, so I made him stand at the door while I thought about it. Later, he joined the class, and I even allowed him to join a game, where he made one sentence.

80 minutes had gone by since the Fuck! Incident, and I was cooled off and contemplative. I thought of the 3 dozen times I’ve personally seen this kid get chewed out, by me and others, phone calls made to mom, the Dean of boys called, the counselor, various punishments meted out. And I concluded, nothing is changing for him.

So I held him about 15 minutes at breaktime, the only real playtime they have, and then I sat down and talked to him.

Very calmly, quietly even, “Are you OK?” He nodded yes.

“I know you are sad boy, and sometimes very angry.” I said it again, in Chinese this time, he nodded.

“You know, when I was grade 5, 10 years old, I was very sad too, it’s hard.” Repeated in Chinese. He nodded, quietly, calmly.

“Sometimes you need to talk…” and a bit more. He acknowledged but his attention waned, but he was quiet, and he returned my gaze when I looked at him directly. I didn’t expect anything, except for him to listen for 2 minutes, which he did. Maybe it will make about one microgram of difference in his life, maybe for one microsecond. Maybe he will remember that one English teacher, who was usually a terrible person, was kind to him that one time. Maybe he will give himself a break, and talk to someone when he is lonely.

On the surface, he’s a troubled kid, bad news, and steals time and energy from his teacher and classmates. At 10 years old, I see a lonely little boy. I hope he finds someone to talk to. So I wrote this poem.