Languages in LA

Some of my students are budding thuglets with La Vida Loca faux-tattoos inked onto their hands — it’s three blue dots in a triangle at the juncture between the thumb and forefinger. One of these kids got stabbed last year in Echo Park. (That scar on his shoulder will win him female attention and sympathy for years to come. Chicks dig scars.)

So amid that bleak landscape, refreshing moments are precious. Here’s what I mean: amid my usual crop of wild, disinterested adolescents, there are the rare wonders, children who washed up on our shore God-knows-how. Two years ago it was a tall, blond Russian boy with wit and remarkable cultural knowledge. Gordy once watched three boys playing and needling each other as I struggled, exasperated, to get them to just once pay attention to the lesson. Finally he turned to me and said wryly in thickly-accented English, “The Three Stooges.” That was a refreshing moment.

Another was a girl from Bolivia whom I sat down in front of a computer and directed to write a summary of the book we had just read. She was the (very) quiet type, so I sort of wandered off and forgot about her for the better part of an hour. When I came back, she silently presented me with 9 pages… nine pages… of methodical, exact details from the novel. Single spaced. I am still certain that she is from Mars.

My most recent refreshing moment was yesterday. My little bespectacled girl from India came into the room and bounded up to me with a tiny white rose bud she had picked from a bush as she passed. “Here,” she said with a gallant flourish, “a white rose for a white lady!” This is just precious; she can’t know that “white lady” is not usually a term of endearment. Particularly in Los Angeles. I think I shall have to press that rosebud in my Complete Works of Jane Austen book. It’s just too cute.