earnest and helpful

Class was minutes away from starting, when my TA, Amy II, walks up to me. She had the usual TA look on her face: one of grave earnestness.

She said to me, "you know the little boy, Richard?"

"Yes," I said, expecting her to tell me that he had dropped the class. Richard was learning very slowly, as were most children in this particular class. Richard's pronunciation though, was exceptionally horrible. I do not spend a lot of time drilling Richard. There are reasons for that. Reasons that are obvious when he is happy or when he is trying to bite another student. Richard has no teeth. Many sounds are simply not available to him.

Richard and I, I feel like we have an understanding. He's not ever going to be a star student and I'm not ever going really get on his case about it. No teeth, you know.

Still if his parents feel like he should wait until a time when he can produce a nice "the" to continue with English education, I would understand.

"His father has died." she said.

"oh," I said, totally, reasonably unprepared for such news. It did not take long for my brain to be filled with sympathy for a little boy and thinking through of consequences.

"Is he coming to class?" I asked the question, more than half knowing the answer.

"Of course," said Amy. Chinese TAs are from a friendly, earnest, naive planet. It's just not the planet you or I are from.

"That's ridiculous." I said, probably choosing a word outside her vocabulary.

"Maybe you could give him some fatherly advice," she tells me. I am overwhelmed by having to contemplate so many disperate things so quickly: anticipation of a drop, sympathy for a boy, the madness of his relatives and now the bizarre psychological malfunctioning of my TA.

Richard is not of my quickest students. Even so, I'm not sure I know more Mandarin than he knows English.

My absurded brain had a brief, grave image of myself and a five year old sitting down.

"Spoon," I would say to him.

"Monkey," he would respond sadly.

I would nod and pat his head, "lambstick, lambstick."

He would look up, as if to ask why, but would instead ask, "is it a banana?"

"No. It isn't."

I did not know how to answer my TA, and did not.