I tutor four kids each week in reading and writing. Perhaps they blur together to people who don’t review their homework, so let me quickly summarize them in chronological order of how long I’ve tutored them.
Jing, the student I’ve had the longest, is an audacious chatterbox. She’s finishing her seventh-grade year and loves to confide in me. Recent conversations have included a recap of everything she learned (or mis-learned) during a whirwind sex education unit in science class, including “Guys have two balls - one for sperm, one for pee.”
Borun is Jing’s age and goes to another school that Jing used to attend. He and Jing tend to argue and chase each other when together. Borun is a tall, athletic, and sleepy-eyed smartass among friends and a blushing sweetheart with adults. He’s in a program that sends NYC public schoolers to private or boarding high schools. Preparing for this transition - and all the tests it requires - has begun to consume his life.
Deedee zips around upper Manhattan on a scooter and enjoys Japanese pop culture. The eighth-grader is one of the most accepting people I know. I think she’s destined to become a glad (not mad) scientist or counselor. Also, I could see Borun being her first love someday. Their moms are best friends, and they live near each other. It’s perfect!
Jeffrey is a fifth-grader who attends school in nearby New Jersey and lives in the same apartment complex as Jing’s family. He’s extremely animated, possessing a rich vocabulary and an appreciation for sarcasm. With this arsenal of skills, Jeffrey ceaselessly bickers with his mom and younger sister. Also, he’s my only tutee who chooses to call me “Ms. Green” instead of “Amanda.”
Those are the kids I tutor. I have a unique relationship with each of them and think they’re all great kids. Back in October, Jeffrey and his little sister were crossing a street in New Jersey and got hit by a car. Hilariously, both ended up in casts, requiring physical therapy and help doing everything.
Maybe I meant “hellishly.” I felt the most sympathy for their mother, a single mom who works all day and then runs her kids from tutoring to swim class to piano after 5 p.m. It’s exhausting to even fathom how much of her day is spent pushing her kids in one door and out another.
Jing had the inside scoop on the accident, since she’d talked to Jeffrey about it since the story broke. Turns out, he and his sister were arguing as they haphazardly crossed against the light. “They deserved to get hit by a car!” Jing said. No angel herself, she enjoys stories of justice served to other people.
I chided her for saying such a thing, though I later asked Jeffrey if it was true there’d been an argument, and if the experience would deter him from squabbling with his sister in the future. He said yes. And no. I think he attributed his survival and speedy recovery to one-legged aggression, clever insults, and intense Nintendo Wii therapy.
When news of the swine flu broke a few weeks ago, I downplayed it and joked that I was trying to catch it in order to get a few days off from work. If anyone could bring it to my respiratory system, it was my tutees and all those disgusting germs they harbor from their hundreds of slimy classmates.
Jing seemed to catch the plague even before I did. Over email, she told me she’d been feeling bad and dizzy. We cancelled tutoring and I even commiserated, “My allergies have been really bad, too. Or maybe it’s a cold.”
The next week, I walked into our tutoring session to see Jing in a neck brace and finger splint. Her mom was sitting at the table and smiled widely.
“What happened to you?!” I exclaimed.
“I was hit by a car,” Jing answered meekly.
That’s why she was dizzy. She’d sustained head trauma, not to mention all the skin scraped off her back. Her finger wasn’t broken, but swollen and splinted just in case. An MRI and X-rays concluded that her injuries were all superficial. What a relief.
“Most people would have died!” Jing’s mom announced proudly. “But Jing is alive!”
It was like she got an A+ in her car accident elective.
I chided her in front of her mom for downplaying her reason for canceling tutoring. You don’t say “I’m making dinner” when you’re really putting your head in an oven, you know? This is a kid I’m hoping to know the rest of my life, so she can’t die unless she tells me first.
As soon as Jing’s mom left us to our work, Jing started talking a mile a minute. “Then the car knocked me over really hard and I fell on the road and my friend screamed and I could feel my blood pouring out of me and it was sooo cool! After that, everything went black!”
One of the most interesting things about Jing is her ability to see the bright side of disaster. She doesn’t have a lot of exciting drama in her life. Her parents are supportive and comfortable. She does well in school. She thinks her life is boring, and maybe it is.
More than once, she’s told me how cool it would be to have a disability or be in a devastating accident. Jing’s not morbid, just naive, adventurous, and looking to be more of an individual. Oh, the curses of being a healthy, happy 13-year-old! She’s looking for blood in all the wrong places.
I was telling Jing once about how I have to wear lots of sunscreen to prevent skin cancer, and she said, “Skin cancer’s not so bad. Do kids ever get skin cancer?” I knew she was thinking that she would look pretty good with skin cancer. Maybe she’d even get to miss some school.
“Cancer is a horrible experience,” I answered. “I hope neither of us gets it.”
“Come on, live life to the fullish,” she replied.
I explained she meant “fullest,” and that she was being pretty “foolish” to say such a thing. Someday she’d understand what I meant.
Jing was telling me that there was sometimes a blurry spot behind her eye since the accident and she wouldn’t mind going blind. Suddenly, I had to ask, “Do you remember when you said Jeffrey deserved to get hit by a car?”
She nodded.
“And then a few months later, you were hit by a car.”
She started laughing.
“You were hit by a karma!” I started giggling.
Jing’s face grew serious. “Yep, I was.”
Then her eyes lit up and she leaned closer. “And it was sooo cool!”
These kids sound great! They are the type of kids that make me believe that procreation is not a bad thing. If only I could guarantee I would end up with a great kid and not one of those criminals-in-training.
They’re wonderful. They make me want to have kids of my own sometimes. Other times, they make me think just knowing them will suffice. Yay for tutoring.