Takeshi Talk, Part Two
This is episode 2 of God Please Give Me More Time, in which our heroine Masaki goes in search of the bastard who infected her with HIV. It’s a pretty annoying episode because she keeps having flashbacks to her experience in the doctor’s office when she’s being told about her condition. Cop-out!
She is in a train, returning from the doctor’s, when the reality of her life being cut short hits her and she collapses in a sobbing heap in the train. I like how the dude nearest to her just turns, looks, and goes back to his paper. That’s a very accurate portrayal!
After we’re treated to the bonus opening MV, the scene cuts to Masaki, sitting alone in her home’s dining hall as the clock ticks away the seconds of her life. Then her friend calls her out to go clubbing, and she goes! What a surprise, I’d have thought she would just hide under the covers. At the club, Masaki comes across a poster for a charity concert against AIDS, featuring our dear Keigo.
Meanwhile, where is Keigo at this point? He is backstage at the recording session, thinking of the girl who reached out to his poor lonesome self. Masaki passes by the building just as Keigo is coming out. There’s a stampede of crazed fangirls for the door, and Masaki falls down. Do Japanese schoolgirls not have to do homework? Why are they so free to chase after idols all the time?
Back in the white van (yes that one), Keigo’s lackey-cum-driver tells him that the girl from the rainy night was out there, along with the others. So of course he has to go back and pick her up from where she’s sitting on a parapet, holding a hanky to her bleeding elbow. Oh, my knight on a white horse van! Although frankly, I prefer his black roadster. Mmm.
They go back to his bachelor pad, but this time she just stands outside. He turns to her and sees her injured elbow. When he reaches out to take a better look at it, she rejects him and we cut to a shot of the hanky lying on the floor. As if we didn’t know she was bleeding already. Then Masaki goes on and on about how she really loved him and wanted to get to know him, and that she doesn’t regret sleeping with him at all. (Something tells me she was referring to the emotional investment and not the physical side of things.) The silly female then decides to walk home, and the ever-suave Keigo sits on his couch looking at her bloodied hanky. No, this is the RIGHT thing to do! Don’t chase after women! It’s just part of their game!
Masaki rolls out of bed, refuses breakfast, and only her mother seems to care. Her father cares more about his golf game, and her mugger brother runs off for his first-period test. Masaki decides to skip school to visit Hibino (Ah Beng) to tell him to take an STD test. Hibino’s female colleague mentions that Masaki hangs out at a club frequented by girls who do “sex for money”, though what is this supposed to indicate, I have no idea. Would the club be like a go-go bar?
There follows a PSA (public service announcement) in the form of scary words like “painful”, “death”, “sexual transmission” and the like jumping out at Masaki as she flips through a book on AIDS. Thanks for further stigmatizing people living with HIV and AIDS!
Enough of Masaki’s emo-tizing, what’s Keigo up to? He’s reminiscing about his late girlfriend, who died from some disease in hospital! Oh, how he held her cold dead body and lamented her passing! Boo hoo hoo! Then he decides to give Masaki a ring. To tell her that he doesn’t care if she drops dead. Because she has no idea what is means to live or die. “You don’t know what it means to die! Or to love someone!” And who made YOU the expert, Keigo-san? After she hangs up, her terribly unperceptive friends show up to drag her to the club. Again.
What follows is just a lot of Masaki being emo and pushing away the people who care, such as Hibino and her mother. So we go back to Keigo, who is sitting in on a rehearsal. On his own accord. Kaoru (the singer) remarks that this is unusual of him, because he doesn’t usually care about others. “Have you suddenly started taking an interest in others?” Again, cue flashback to Masaki saying… something. It’s not important what is it anymore, is it?
We get to watch some neighbourhood soccer before Hibino shows up to tell Masaki that he tested negative on the STD test. “What about the HIV test?” He digs out another piece of paper. “Negative means I don’t have it, right?” So Masaki lashes out at him, because it wasn’t negative for her, and isn’t this what she deserves for engaging in compensated dating? Hibino, being the stalwart man (and also a bit of a doormat) comforts her by telling her (essentially) that he will still be her friend.
Okay, so now we know that it wasn’t Hibino who infected her. That leaves 2 candidates! Although the way this story is going, you should have known from the start who was the culprit.
Still in denial, Masaki calls up the hospital late at night to ask if there could have been a mistake. The doctor stalls by telling her to come to the hospital, and Masaki eventually gets it. There wasn’t any mistake (because that would be a really cheap copout).
While she lies in a miserable heap on the bed, her phone rings. It’s Keigo, surprise surprise. What is this, a booty call? You tell her off and then call her up like nothing happened? Although, I don’t think I’ve heard anything sexier to come out of a cellphone than Keigo’s “ore dayo” (it’s me). The unlimited arrogance! I like.
She’s still puzzling over this magic of someone’s voice coming out of her phone, when a *beep beep* sounds from outside her window. Okay, so it’s more like *honk honk*, but it’s still kinda a cute sound, not *pooon poooon* like the lorries do in Malaysia. Girl apparently has enough brains to put two and two together, and opens her window to look down into Keigo’s convertible, which so conveniently has its top down. And of course her bedroom window is conveniently above wherever he decided to stop his car, otherwise Masaki’s dad might have been the one throwing golf clubs at Keigo for making noise late at night.
In an expositional move, Masaki asks how he got her address. I mean, dude may be a superstar, but he’s not psychic nor does he have access to central government databases… I hope. Answer: She is a member of Kaoru’s fan club, so he got her address from there. Quite a good move, not terribly slick but it got the job done. It’s something I would have done, with my data-mining capabilities. He gives her back her biohazardous hanky, and follows this up with… a cigarette. Man! Totally gratuitous smoking.
The hanky reminds her that Keigo is doing some AIDS charity concert, so she asks if he ever got tested. Keigo replies that his agency made him get tested, as part of the campaign. A lorry rumbles by as he reveals that he tested… positive. OH NO!
He keeps a straight face for about 7.5 seconds before breaking into his first grin of the series. PSYCH! So he’s not going to die from AIDS. Because at the rate he’s puffing, lung cancer will get him first. “So it wasn’t you,” Masaki mumbles, to which Keigo gives the most adorable “huh?” I have ever seen in a grown man.
They drive up to some hill overlooking the city, and Takeshi basically stops acting for this part. He is essentially telling his own life story as Keigo tells Masaki how he spent time in LA and feels neither here nor there, with no sense of belonging. “Alone and yet wanting help.” He turns back to Masaki. “Isn’t that how you feel?”
She gathers up her courage to reply. “Keigo, I…” and her grip tightens on the musical-note-patterned paper cups they’re drinking out of. Such a cute and kitschy design! You wouldn’t have thought that a serious musician like Keigo would use such things! The romantic music builds up as Keigo leans in for a kiss, then cuts off abruptly as Masaki pulls back and tells him not to be kind to her.
Having now distanced herself from him (and also because we’re coming to the end of the episode), Masaki finally does the big reveal. “I slept with a man for 50,000 yen!” Keigo: “Sou ka (I see).” Then she gets on with it. I have HIV! I’m gonna get AIDS! And I didn’t want to tell you, but I have to: I may have passed it to you!
HAVE YOU PEOPLE NEVER HEARD OF CONDOMS?! Seriously, even if there wasn’t any HIV, do the words “unwanted teenage pregnancy” mean anything? And you, Keigo, you’re supposed to be the adult! You should know better, because she could slap you with a child-support suit anytime, dude. Sheesh!
Keigo’s expression of shell-shocked horror is probably a PSA in itself. I wish it also meant that he was regretting his promiscuous past, but that’s probably too much to ask. Frankly, just vicariously absorbing his shock, fear and horror is enough to make me celibate. Too many evil germs out there.
What pisses me off is that it took her so long to get around to telling Keigo, when he was the one at most risk of getting infected by her. I mean, when he brought her to his apartment after she fell down, she had plenty of chances to tell him, but instead she just went beating round the bush about how she doesn’t hate him. Yeah, you don’t regret sleeping with him, but if you passed it to him, he’s going to have a lifetime of regrets for sleeping with you! And how come we’re never told how he feels about sleeping with her? Are we supposed to assume that it was just another one-night stand for him? But it’s obviously not, so how come Keigo isn’t allowed to contribute to this romantic fantasy? He just stands as a blank screen for females to project their own romantic fantasies. Takeshi’s great in this role, but I think the actress had more chance to show off her acting skills.
Takeshi Talk, Part One
I recently changed my usual bus route to work, because I kept missing the bus to Toa Payoh. Now I take a bus to Orchard and then the MRT to Novena. Along the way, I face mortal danger from the escalators - and it’s Takeshi’s fault.
At the underpass from Tangs to the MRT station, there’s a giant ad for Red Cliff, and you can look at the different actors as you go up or down the escalator. Tony Leung and Takeshi get the prime spot at eye level, as well as another Takeshi picture right at the bottom of the escalator. So I have to mind that I’m not too busy staring, otherwise I’ll fall headlong down the very sharp and serrated steps. Also, I keep having to resist the temptation to pose in front of the Takeshi picture and take an “act cute” photo.
And I have to run this gauntlet every day!
On another note, I am now catching up with my neglected TV series, Kamisama Mou Sukoshi Dake (God Please Give Me More Time), which catapulted Takeshi to fame in Japan. Frankly, it’s a pretty rubbish story - it reads like fanfiction, which I suppose it is - how very meta. But I never claimed to watch it for the story, eh?
So I’m going to do a blow-by-blow commentary a la Mystery Science Theatre 3000, and snark my way through the series.
Part One begins after the jump.
White Knight, Dark Knight, who will save Gotham tonight?
AS*spoiler alert for Batman: The Dark Knight*
Brain blown. Movie too awesome. Cannot be coherent. Here have many bullet points instead.
- Much symbolism. I like symbolism. Harvey Dent’s lucky coin. The references to him as Gotham’s “white knight”. The use of Joker cards.
- Nolan brothers totally rock. What’s a director without a good screenplay, so it’s just as well that the director co-wrote the screenplay with his brother. The mind-blowingness should come as no surprise, being that these are the guys who did “The Prestige” and that left me speechless.
- The Batbike is sex on two wheels.
- Michael Caine again gets snappy one-liners, by virtue of being British. “The Lamborghini? Much more subtle.”
- Batman is not perfect, and Lucius Fox does not serve him blindly.
- Public opinion can be a real bitch.
- The Joker is a criminal mastermind. So is he sane or insane? I have no idea.
- The 2 ferries each holding the other’s fate: brilliant storytelling. I did see it coming, but I didn’t know how it would play out. In this case, the true heroes are the people of Gotham.
- The hero is imperfect, the villain is without malice, and suffering warps a good man into an evil one. Such is humanity. There are no heroes, only people doing what they can.
- The antagonistic balance between hero and villain, as old as language and still unresolved. For how does one exist without the other?
- The Joker makes some good points about gravity and anarchy.
- The overarching point of the film, according to me: We are all haunted by shadows in our heart. Misguided intentions, faulty motivations, love… all these lead us to decisions we regret, and which will stay with us forever. There is no evil blackness or noble whiteness - we are only human, and have both.
- Explosions +sound effects of THX movie theatre = nerdgasm.
- The Joker tells 2 different stories regarding his scars. Which is real, and does it even matter?
- Are police forces so corrupt that even Gotham’s cops can be bought? And do all forces have an Internal Affairs department?
- The subtitles are funny. Onscreen says “balls”, subs say “LP”. Hahahaha! (LP = lam par)
- How do you continue being, when the forces that made you are now striving to unmake you?
- When given two choices: Yes or No, remember that there is a third way: “F87k it.”
So that makes 3 movies in 2 weeks. You know you’ve been to the cinema too often when the ads are stale and even the trailers aren’t exciting anymore - it’s the 2nd time I’ve seen the trailer for the new Mummy movie. I enjoyed the trailer for the upcoming “Clone Wars”, though. With a female Sith Lord, that would make the Dark Side more progressive than the American presidency.
You can make me young again.
Today I realised that it has been 10 years, and I still haven’t realised one of my teenage dreams.
I want to marry Takeshi Kaneshiro.
And yes, I’m regressing terribly to the point where I’m lusting after imaginary, unattainable males instead of looking at the concrete ones around me, but you’ll excuse me if fantasy’s much more appealing than the real world right now.
It’s not because I just watched Red Cliff, alright. It’s actually because today I decided to listen to my favourite Japanese emo love song, and Googled for the lyrics. And it turns out that my favourite song is the theme song to a very popular TV series starring my favourite Japanese actor! Okay, so I should have known this earlier. Link to the YouTube video is here. Quality is bad but the audio’s fine.
I’m a sucker for long-haired guys with soulful eyes, outcasts who are just that little bit too weird for society. Am I talking about Takeshi or his character? Both, if you’re familiar with the Hong Kong showbiz world. Medium-long hair is sexy, and soulful eyes that betray loneliness and a desire to be understood just make me wanna cuddle their owner to my insubstantial bosom.
Suddenly today I’m 16 again, grinning foolishly at the computer screen as it brings me images of Takeshi in the rain, at the piano… okay so the whole show is really a giant romance fanfiction of the sort I detest in Korean dramas, but as I said, I’m a sucker for Takeshi.
Just for today, I am the same age as my students.
Off-day offloads
Here I am, on my day off. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not overworked by slave-driver employers. Quite the contrary, I go in to work when I’m not expected, just because I like the company of others. But this is my first proper day off in two weeks.
Last week I used my two off-days to be with my family and attend commencement, so I didn’t really have any time to just chill out and do “me” stuff. “Me” stuff means the mundane, such as backing up my hard drive and ironing my clothes, and more abstract pleasures such as eating lunch at whatever time I like, and reading online comics non-stop, because I have 10 years of backlog to get through. I’ve been reading this comic, “Little Dee”, and its creator used to do a daily strip entitled “Bruno”. It was a surprise for me to read “Bruno”, because it’s very much for mature audiences, and “Little Dee” is quite child-friendly.
So far today I’ve picked up my mail, sent out my mail, done my laundry (yay!), and had a delicious lunch of porridge from the downstairs stall. The proprietor didn’t skimp on the ikan bilis, but maybe it’s because he’s a young man and I’m a pretty girl. Yes, I admit to the sexistness of that statement.
While we’re on the subject of food stall proprietors: The chicken rice seller downstairs from my office calls me “mei-mei”. Heh. When your job consists of being with people who consider you a relic, having someone treat you as a younger person isn’t all that bad.
There’s a temporary stage erected on the empty field, visible from my balcony. I can hear the dong-dong-chiang of drums and cymbals as they rehearse for tonight’s performance. Perhaps I’ll head out later and watch. I haven’t seen Chinese opera since I was a very young child.
I think raising kids is always so damn hard because they usually turn out the opposite of what you wanted them to be, and if they don’t, you’ve failed somehow to raise an independent human being. Either way you’re damned. Tell me again why we don’t have parenting licenses?
And now to be controversial: I’m calling out the hypocrisy I see in some sectors, that they oppose abortion and stem-cell research, and not assisted fertility. If children are indeed given by God, and if you have none in spite of your efforts, then isn’t that a pretty clear sign that God doesn’t want you to have any? Why are you messing with the divine plan to keep you child-free? Answer me that, and then maybe I’ll give you leeway to advance your pro-life rhetoric. If you ask little cynical me, though, I’d just say that anything that advances their numbers is a good thing, and anything that reduces it is bad. Never mind the fact that a pro-life policy also affects people who don’t necessarily share their religious views. How unselfish they are, to want to save us all from the hellfire of Damnation!
Part II:
One of my students woke me from my nap with a nudge on MSN. Serves me right for not turning down the volume. Seeing how it was already 7pm, I readied to go out grocery shopping at the bargain supermarket before it closed. I managed to lug back nearly 50 dollars’ worth of groceries, as the rain drizzled down gently. So gently that I could just barely feel it alighting on my skin as I waited for the red man to turn green. The Chinese opera had already started, but I think it was in Hokkien because I had no idea what they were saying. Still sounded like fun, though.
On the uphill walk to my apartment, I glanced back at the makeshift stage and saw the moon, just rising above the buildings. She was hidden behind the diffuse rainclouds, aglow but not bright. As though she, like the opera performers, was waiting in the wings for her moment to shine.
I did my ironing, which is always strangely calming. Bringing flat, smooth order out of wrinkled chaos. There’s an analogy in there somewhere.
Now it’s time for some bedtime Sudoku, and that’s not anything dirty or kinky a la “bedroom Twister”, okay? Although Sudoku makes for a poor nightcap, it revs up my brain instead of calming it down for sleep.
I! Am! Chai-niece!
About a month ago I sat on a bus, absent-mindedly watching TV Mobile, when a movie trailer came on. It was for some show starring Takeshi Kaneshiro. And as far as I’m concerned, Takeshi in a movie is good enough reason to hand over my debit card and sit in a big dark room for 2-and-a-half hours. Doesn’t really matter what the movie is.
The movie, by the way, is Red Cliff. Being the ignorant banana that I am, I thought it was just another period piece, instead of being one of the major stories in the Three Kingdoms novel. It wasn’t until I wiki’ed it that I realised the cultural import of the movie.
The nearest comparison I can draw to Red Cliff is 2007’s 300, which I absolutely, thoroughly enjoyed, and not just for the bare-torsoed muscly men. 300 was a real popcorn movie, a cinematic blockbuster, go watch and be entertained. Probably also something to do with the overall look of the movie, and different directorial visions.
Red Cliff, on the other hand, didn’t feel as entertaining. Sure it had its good bits - everyone loved Takeshi’s interpretation of the strategist Zhuge Liang, and you can’t not like Tony Leung (it’s illegal!) but it just lacks that punch. Surprising for a John Woo film, actually. At times it felt more like a historical re-enactment, which I suppose it partially is.
In certain parts the military tactics really had me befuddled. There’s a pivotal scene where the first skirmish happens, but the events seem to go beyond common sense. *spoiler alert* Who rides into unfamiliar terrain, with poor visibility, just to pursue what seems like an easy target? C’mon, stuff like that only happens in Looney Tunes cartoons, right? Right? I very much doubt you need to read Sun Tzu’s Art of War to know that it’s not the wisest move.
All in all, while Red Cliff is a perfectly fine cultural vehicle (apparently produced to coincide with the Beijing Olympics), it lacks entertainment value. I won’t fault it for being long, since wars are protracted, wearying affairs. But it just… lacks… something.
Probably machismo.
On another note:
Whoever it was who spoke of turning swords into ploughshares, didn’t watch war movies. Look at how many awesome war movies there are. No one’s made an awesome farming movie yet, eh? No, the blood and gore doesn’t get to me, and it’s not because I have bloodlust. What is chess but a war game, writ small upon a board? What is war but a strategy game, writ large? And thus, I enjoy the mental stimulation of war movies, especially if they involve strategies.
Ok, who messed with my karma wheel?
Strange things have been happening recently. Really strange things.
Yesterday, I lost an entire streak of 5 or 6 games of Big 2 (tai dee) to one of my students. I couldn’t win at all, and I lost pretty badly even with a good hand. I don’t get it! Yes, I know I’m quite dumb at this game, but I’m not all THAT bad!
And today, I started up the music player on my phone, only for it to tell me “files corrupted”. What! I have 24 hours of music on this thing, and now I have to add them all over again? Plus it makes no sense for the files to suddenly be corrupted, I haven’t done anything to them. Faced with the prospect of an hour-long commute without music to drown out the lousy Channel 8 drama on TV Mobile, I pressed “refresh library”. Thankfully it worked, otherwise I might be a little less sane (than usual) today.
Approaching my usual bus stop, I checked my watch and got a gigantic shock. The face read 11.15am, which seemed odd given that I left the house at 10.10am and it doesn’t take an hour to get to that stop. Plus the more pressing issue of being late for work, of course. I rushed to work, with Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” in the background. I made it to the office and started up the laptop.
Imagine my confusion when the computer clock showed 10.57am. “Eh?” I thought. I looked at the actual analog clock on the wall. It read 11.05am. I looked at my watch. It read 11.40am. I took it off my wrist and readjusted it.
I know it’s perfectly possible that someone pranked me by adjusting my watch, but I’m sure it was perfectly normal yesterday. I don’t take off my watch at work, so none of the kids did it, and the only time it comes off is when I’m back at home. So, assuming that no one had the opportunity to adjust my watch - how did that discrepancy come about?
I am thoroughly befuddled. It feels like I’m the butt of a cosmic joke on some level.
A month in pictures
Graffiti that I left behind on the wall outside C205, as a permanent reminder of my stay. Permanent until they renovate, anyway. It reads “Lynn Chan lived here, 26.12.04 - 10.5.08″. My goodness, it’s like an epitaph on a headstone.
I was at Novena Square on the 6th of July supporting Hair for Hope, an event by the Children’s Cancer Foundation where volunteers raise pledges for shaving their heads. My friend Kelvin was a shavee, and this was right before his convocation ceremony, so hats off to him! (pun intended)
As you can see, Tan Kheng Hua was the emcee, and I was a bit starstruck so I took a picture. Although in Singapore, seeing your local TV celebrities is quite a commonplace affair, ya?
Dinner at Tetsu in Tanglin Mall, because my parents came down for my convocation and Gabriel sent me the restaurant review right before. It wasn’t bad. This is my a la carte selection of tempura and kushi-age (I think that’s the term for the breaded stuff).
My mum’s set meal. Comes with the usual rice, soup, etc.
This is dessert. Some chewy green-tea-powdered jelly thing with konnyaku strips underneath.
I actually wanted to take that nice piece of patterned paper under the bowl, but that’s beyond cheap. Also it was a bit damp.
I’ve been pretty much stuck in the same areas of Singapore for the past month or so - home, work, occasionally Orchard. Perhaps one day I’ll go hiking in the nature park nearby, just for a change of pace. When you work in the city and look at concrete buildings all day long while the air-con hums at you, scenery consisting of trees and birdsong sounds like a real treat.
What’s wrong with kids today?
Not all kids, just two. What’s wrong with two of my kids today?
One (Student C) has been through our motivational workshop and still delights in making doomed pronouncements for himself. “I’ll fail.” “I’ll get everything wrong.” “See, told you I wouldn’t get an A1.” He knows I hate these statements, he knows they go against our mindset of positive thinking, and he knows he can do better than his dire predictions, but still he delights in them. I feel like smacking him one. Or a dozen, whatever it takes to get the message across to him.
Today Students A and C did a practice test, and Student C was “so happy” to get an A2. As my boss was there, I challenged Student C to tell my boss to his face that he was happy with the A2. My boss was unflappable. He just gave his usual speech about “it’s your life, you screw it up”. I’m torn between correcting Student C every time he says this, because I want to change his mindset, and just ignoring it, because I know he’s just doing it for the attention. He does a lot of things for attention, but this is the one that irritates me the most. Also, he’s passive-agressive: While he won’t voice out his objections, he will just stubbornly persist in his erroneous ways until you give in out of exhaustion.
If I were allowed to smack them around, I so totally would. Except that physical punishment probably doesn’t mean anything to these kids. They have other weaknesses, and I shall find these and exploit them! Muahahahaha!
Student B was also present today, but not in my class. When I went into his classroom, he told me in the presence of his teacher and classmates that he had essentially been offered money to shut up and not spill a stupid, trivial secret. His school is really terrible, not academically but in what they do to their children. What kid uses money as his instrument of first resort? Kids who have too much, that’s what. And this breeds a very “money talks” mentality among them. All of them. Every single one of them. I sincerely doubt I could find one kid in that school who has the kind of moral fibre that Student A showed.
So I told Student B straight to his face, again in front of others, that he had no integrity. He happily agreed. *sigh*
Later I was forced to play my last card. I told him that his peer(s) considered him not the greatest role model. I asked him if he would do business with someone with no integrity, and how would he succeed anyway when he himself has none, yet intends to go into business? He has a great entrepreneurial mind, I’ll give him that, but his moral compass is seriously screwed up.
I told him that if he was already such an asshole at 15, what kind of asshole would he be at 25? He seemed to find this amusing, so I don’t know if the message got through. People like him have an awesome tendency for selective hearing and memory.
I shall probably just give up on both of them. As my bosses tell me, you can’t change all your students. If they don’t want to change, I’m not going to waste my time and energy on them when I have lots of other students who need guidance. My only priority is to boost their grades, since that’s what I’m being paid for. If they want the moral fibre freebie, it’s theirs for the taking, otherwise I can’t be bothered anymore.
Youth is not always foolish.
And age is not always wise.
Today I had two students, and the interplay between them showed me the areas that I need to work on if I’m to deliver on my motto of “Better Grades, Better People”. One of them (Student B) makes his school out to be terribly notorious, and the other (Student A) sits and listens to tales of debauchery and extreme materialism.
I rode the bus back with Student A, and he showed me what lessons I could learn from “my kids”.
He reflected on the conversations we had during class today, and stated his opinion that extreme materialism, premarital sex and all the other scandalously juicy topics found in his classmate’s stories are nothing to be glorified. I know that seems obvious, but the way Student B was talking about it, you’d think debauchery was the new black. What was great was that Student A saw through all that, filtered it through his own moral values and came to the conclusion that he did not agree with his friend. One point to him for not giving in to peer pressure.
Throughout the bus ride, he told me why he had come to that conclusion. His upbringing had not involved massive sums of money, electronic toys and other such goods that children nowadays seem to take as their birthright. He said he had turned out fine, which translates to “I like myself the way I am”.
I was very pleased with his maturity and security in being himself. He told me he couldn’t be bothered with comparing cars, watches, phones or bags with his schoolmates, because he bought what he wanted, trends and coolness be damned. He rightly identified this obsession with luxury goods as just so much showing off, because we both very much doubted that teenagers know how to truly appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into a Rolex, even if they owned multiple genuine articles.
He is also very sure of himself, without needing to compare himself with others to see who’s superior. Insults rarely got to him, even if they were regarding his weight, hair or clothes - topics that would probably cause other kids to fight to first blood to defend their “honour”. He did not see the need to live by others’ standards, and I have to say that I admire him for that. Especially when I take into account that such taunts are purely out of malice, because there is certainly nothing wrong with his appearance. Not retaliating against untrue insults is definitely much harder than when the insults are rightly deserved.
Barely halfway through his teens, he already shows signs of becoming a man with whom one would be proud to associate.
So today, my student taught me something: Teenagers aren’t all stupid and shallow. Once in a while, you find a gem like my student, who is superbly level-headed. I won’t say he’s wise beyond his years, because that would imply that people aren’t usually this insightful at his age. Perhaps over the generations, humankind became so soft that you’re allowed to be stupid and selfish at 30 years old. But this is not our birthright, this is a regression. It shouldn’t have to be this way.
There is nothing to stop us - or our children - from attaining mental maturity at an age when some are still undergoing puberty. I will not make excuses for my kids any more. For too long, I have excused what society at large considers inexcusable behaviour, on account of their youth. No more. One student has shown me the path that all of them should be on. I would have been remiss if I did not at least try to set them on the right track.
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