Be afraid. Be very afraid. There’s some crazy stuff happening inside that head.

Louis doesn’t like her eyes.  She thinks they’re too small.  So when you take her picture, she holds them wide open.  Like this.  I told her she looks better natural, but she said “Oh.  Well.  I don’t care.”

She is a fascinating creature.  She believes, and hopes, for example, that zombies are plotting to take over the earth.  In fact, she thinks she just might be one.  It’s as possible — as possible as anything is– she claims,  that she died in 1974 – at age seven, and that she’s stuck there.  At good ol’ age seven.  She loves gore and horror and blood.

 She’s crazy about her friends and demands that everyone completely accept everyone else for who exactly they are.

Which would work out well for her, I’d say.

With Good Friends

She loves, loves, loves to bake – especially cookies, preferably with chocolate.  She is in my cooking class and sometimes will pop into my ‘regular’ classroom in the middle of the day with a question such as “what the heck is cream of tartar?” to which I answer I really don’t know.  Because I don’t.  I mean really, does anyone? (Mrs. Montgomery – I’ve got 5,000 won on you knowing exactly what this is.  Don’t fail me now, Home Ec Teacher Extraordinaire!)

Louis used to kind of want to be a boy – that was the year she named herself Louis.  She’s rethinking now:  considering Raquel.  I told her the connotations of the name Raquel and she said, happily,  “Oh.  Well.  I don’t care.”

This is Louis.  Who calls herself “The Kid” and even writes that on assignments.  No one else calls her that.  This does not faze her.

She reviles the Korean language, won’t speak it unless her parents force her to. Has decided to grow out her hair.  Finds that she has outgrown, already, living in her parents’ home.  She dreams of living in Ohio, a place so magical it fills her dreams.

Yep, Ohio.

When I told her the connotations of Ohio, she said, happily, “Oh.  Well.  I don’t care.”

It shames me to say that when I first met her, I judged imagined Louis to be a student who would constantly keep her classmates off track, demanding attention and basking in the reactions when she talked about guts, decapitation, surgery and the undead.  This, friends, is why you cannot buy the wine because of the fancy, beautiful label, the car because of the sleek look, the outfit because of the model inside it.

Because Louis is among the brightest, cleverest, most focused academic minds I have ever had the honor of teaching.

Each day in my classroom, students complete a brain warm up activity.  These are often tricky problems, within which answers lie, if you think about the question kind of askew.  Students love these activities and look forward to them every day.  They’re a great way to focus their attention at the start of class.

This is a poem Louis wrote for me, about said Brain Warm Ups.  She did this because she wanted to.

Brains are like leftovers,

they have to be warmed up.

Especially in the mornings

not long after you get up.

A riddle, a puzzle, something out of a book.

It doesn’t matter what it is or how long it has took.

It’s not that easy to go ahead

and think of stuff right up.

‘Cuz brains are like leftovers.

They need to be warmed up.

I found out later, she wrote a poem for each of her teachers, completely unique to something they do in their classrooms.  That’s Louis.  Creative.  Fascinating.  Inventive.  Sagacious.  Witty.  FUN.

I have stopped telling Louis the connotations of anything she says that seems odd.  It is absolutely true that I wish I had half of Louis’ chutzpah.  Half of her zest for life.  Half of her confidence, which is understated, but real.  I wish to take with me, back to America, Louis’ absolute certainty that she is just fine as she is, and thank you very much.

And accepting people for exactly who they are will work out nicely for us all.  Dontcha think?

Louis. Oprah. Oprah. Louis.  (Acting, for a book report.)

…far away, remembering…

It’s been one year since the 9.2 earthquake rocked Japan, causing a tsunami that killed over 15,000 people, and injuring twice that number.  I’m so glad Marvin Kwon wasn’t one of them.

I was in Belfast, Maine that day, sprawled out on my mother’s overstuffed purple couch making extensive lists, preparing to come to Korea.  Marvin was in Sendai, on the coast of Japan,  hovered under a desk in art class at his school, focused on the seemingly ceaseless jolting and jouncing – and his classmate crying nearby.

He remembers this:  Glass breaking. Teachers hustling students onto buses.  Cold, snow.  He didn’t have his coat.  Calmness and apprehension; compliance and fear.  Aftershocks that went on for hours.  A barely warm school bus.   He didn’t know where they would go.  Where they could go.

Sendai, Japan, March 12, 2011

After getting back to his family’s apartment a half a day later, he remembers this:  four days of freezing cold temperatures with very little food.  No mode of transportation.  No clear roadways anyway.  No way to contact his mother, who had remained in Korea.  No understanding of the extent of the damage; of who, of their friends, were alive or dead.  One cold night sleeping in a car.  Only canned tuna and apples to eat, and no other fresh produce to be found.  A father desperate to reach his wife and keep his children safe.

Marvin was 11 years old.

He downplays his own peril, explaining that at the time, he didn’t understand the extent of the destruction.  He doesn’t often share his story, because, after all, he says, he survived (along with his sister and his father.)  When so many have died, been hurt or displaced, there is nothing to complain about.  No reason to call attention to himself.  He insists the lack of looting and chaos, and the absolute patience with which victims waited for food and warm shelter are his strongest memories.

Marvin is in my 7th grade English class.  His writing returns again and again to these days:  a glimpse here, a shocking revelation there.  The memories pop up like a beach ball he’s trying to hold under water.  He knows how lucky he’s been.  But I don’t think he understands how lucky the rest of us are — that he is here — with this handsome smiling face.

With the brightest of futures ahead.