Friday
It’s Friday afternoon, and my students are milling about. The bell is about to ring, releasing them for lunch. Some of them, who have not stepped over that threshold into young adulthood, will run out screaming and jostling. The others will stroll out more slowly, surreptitiously checking their cellphones for messages.
They aren’t supposed to bring such things to school — cellphones, iPods, gameboys — but teachers discover the same thing parents discover: adolescents are such demonic pests when they are bored, you will sometimes give them anything they want just to make them shut up and go away.
So occasionally, such as when they’ve been remarkably compliant during a week’s marathon stretch of standardized tests, I give in. It’s five minutes till the bell on Friday, and iPods are discreetly appearing all over the room. Fine. I don’t care. All I want in the world right now is a moment’s peace.
I look up and see a sight that arrests my attention. Around a table are gathered a Korean girl, a boy from Sri Lanka, an Armenian girl, a tiny Pakistani girl, and a Mexican boy. They all have their heads together and are straining to hear the music emanating from the earphones of an iPod.
Coming to the table, I ask “What are you listening to?” The Armenian girl, grinning broadly at having piqued adult interest, brandishes a CD case featuring a young American man in hip-hop mode, his ball cap sideways, his clothes appropriately both designer and baggy.
I hate hip-hop. But I pause. Look at this group, their heads together, all listening… a poster-child gathering of international students enjoying the rhythmic chantings of some callow, corporate-sponsored white surburban boy posing as a dangerous inner-city thug. It’s so L.A. And it’s peaceful! ‘Til the bell rings.
