What’s the matter?

Johnathan comes home everyday with stories that would make any writer jealous. Sometimes I wish I had his job and got to see the first-graders wear surgical masks while they cook lunch. But then he has a day where he teaches forty kids the phrase “I have diarrhea” by grabbing his stomach in pain and pretending to waddle to the bathroom. That’s my husband, the man with explosive “stomach trouble”. Then the kids repeated “I have diarrhea” like parrots for five minutes while he worked on their pronunciation. “No, I have di-arr-hea.“It makes sense now why I have high school kids who can name every part of their body and tell me their ailments in graphic detail but don’t know the directions for right, left and straight or how to tell time. They’re going to get to a city in America and be able to describe their problem, “I need brain surgery,” or “My right ankle is broken,” but when a kind Samaritan gives them directions to the doctor’s office they’ll be met with blank stares. “Well, can I take you there myself? How about two o’clock?” a nice Montanan will offer and my students will say what they say to me in class–”Yes, yes, okay”–and then hobble off alone down the street. I can’t be the only language teacher who has ever helped students master useless phrases. Part of me hopes that somewhere, at some point, they might need to know them. Not that I wish explosive diarrhea on any of them, but at least if they’re having it I guess I know they won’t die of dehydration. They’ll be able to comfortably talk about it. In graphic detail. With perfect prononciation. That’s a real feather in the cap for any teacher.

In one class we’re working on the sentence: “burnable garbage gets put out Tuesdays and Fridays”. The sentence is useful in Japan, in Japanese, but not in Montana where recycling is about as common as udon noodles and daikon. While my job, in theory, is to teach the high schoolers “conversational” English, they’ll probably get to America and have kids ask them the questions Johnathan gets everyday:
“Do you like fish or bugs?”
“Do you eat soccer balls?”
“Do you like babies or children better?”
“Father or grandfather?”
“Dogs or cats?”
“Did your wife smell good at your wedding?”
“Do you like private parts? Butts? Facial hair?

And then they’ll be glad they know the words for diarrhea, private parts and pubic hair. I know I’m their teacher, but when it comes down to a choice between brain surgery and knowing when it’s two o’clock, who am I to tell them which they need to know? Kids ask weird stuff in any language (not stupid things my sister Jazz would have me say. She’s an elementary education major so she has to believe kids make logical sense in the questions they ask). I’ll concede, Jazz, that maybe their questions do make sense, and maybe I can teach them some weird vocab for their “conversational skills”–dragonfly, ghost, vomit–but how do I prepare them for the little girl who came up to Johnathan, smiled, and then punched him right in the private parts?