Friday, March 4, 2011

Post-Script

Lest you think all my students are sweet gift-bearing pupils, let me burst the bubble by sharing this creepy anecdote from today:

I was playing a game with my intermediate teens where we'd throw a ball around, and when you caught it, you had to say a colour. We ran out of the standard colours pretty quickly, so the kids were trying to think up more creative ones.

Cue Dima asking me, "What is the colour of a dead person who has been killed in a fire?"

Umm...gee, I don't know you sick kid, charred flesh? What kind of question is that???

So you see, along with charming flower-givers I also teach homicidal pyromaniacs. Charming.

5 comments:

  1. You and men...or boys in this case, but still...careful when you open a present from him.

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  2. Hahaha...I think I know the kid...

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  3. Its just a russian sense of humor, which is macabre sometimes.
    Ever heard short poems about "A little kid"? When I was 8, we loved them. My favorite was:
    Маленький мальчик нашел ананас,
    Им оказался немецкий фугас,
    Маленький мальчик хотел его съесть -
    Челюсть нашли километров за шесть.

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  4. No I've never heard these poems before. I understand about half of the one you wrote - do you mind offering a translation? :)

    And this kid is crazy with a capital C. He burst into the teacher's room one day and demanded to know if I was acquainted with the poet Gumilyov. I said I had heard of him (all I really know is that he was married to Anna Akhmatova and was killed by the Bolsheviks) and Dima promptly adopted this theatrical pose, one fist raised and clenched, and launched into a dramatic memorization of one of Gumilyov's poems. It was soooo awkward...no one has ever recited poetry to me before haha so I had no idea where to look...do I look at him? Do I look around the room? All the other teachers were just stunned...

    I have tons of Dima stories - he is such a character!

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  5. That Dima looks like an attention... addict :)
    The translation (direct, non-rhymed)
    A little boy did find a pineapple,
    Which was, in fact, a german bomb,
    A little boy tried to eat it,
    His jaw was found about six kilometers away.

    I don't know about kids today, but in my childhood there were tons of such poems. We were delighted to learn new ones and to tell each other and laugh.

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