Role Model

Today I volunteered at Little YG (aka Yujin Gakuen shogakko), my alma mater, if you can say that about an elementary school. Michiko-sensei was my third grade teacher, and today I helped in her first-grade class. It's funny to have gone from the "problem child" who supposedly threw Travis Worscherwits into a plate-glass window (To this day, I maintain it was actually just a bit of a shove) to "Aaburi sensei". There was this one kid who had just started Japanese this year and was a tad ADHD, emphasis on the AD. He would stand up and wander around the classroom until the teacher told him to go back to his seat. I think he also had a little crush on me, since he would always come and talk to me while I was grading their homework. Michiko was telling the class (in Japanese, of course) that I used to be a first grader in that very room, and, by way of encouraging this poor kid, told him that I used to be "just like him", and look at me now! I am a sensei! All you little kids should grow up to be like me and come back and visit during your free period. Gee. What do you really say to that? It was funny, but at the same time, there was a smidge of indignation sludging around in my thoughts. I wasn't really like that boy. I had a good reason for shoving that kid! If anything, I'm just like that one blond girl who only speaks in Japanese and always knows the answers. But now, I guess I'm a role model for all kinds of semi-delinquent first graders whose lights I would have punched out if I had been in their class. I'm kind of glad though. Better to be a poster child for reformed "problem children" than nothing. Seriously, I could have just changed that kid's life. It's not likely, but it's possible.