Babbling On a Friday Night

I’m getting overwhelmed with interest regarding my newest pursuit, teaching English as a Second Language.

I’ve been meeting with clients this week, getting a schedule worked out, and now I’m confident I’ll be able to be full-time self-employed within a month. How quickly a dime can spin, my friends.

I have a lot more incentive to work full-time for myself than I do for a company, and a lot more reward on both financial and emotional levels.

I wouldn’t call myself the most social person in the world, but I can work a room, man. I’m a big fan of isolating myself at times, like tonight. I’ve bought a nice bottle of wine, intend to make myself a decent meal, and plan to watch the last couple episodes in the first season of The Wire, before CBS’s new “Threshold” series premieres.

Back when I did have a job, I always enjoyed quiet Fridays in. I don’t understand this notion of having to party because you’re done with your work week. If that turns your crank, then so be it. This, this mellowness, is what turns mine.

But when I need to, baby, I can turn my personality up to nine.

This week, I’ve been turned right up every day, and now it looks like I’ve got a new career for awhile.

I think I sometimes forget what a cool thing teaching can be. There’s this real opportunity you’re given to play a role in the shaping of an individual. You think I’m overstating things? I don’t think so at all.

I’ve done this before. Back in the day, I had this 12-year-old Taiwanese kid I was teaching. I assigned him and his brother stories to write, and whenever we’d mark the stories, they’d get me to tell them what I might’ve done differently, plot-wise.

Within a few weeks of my taking these skeletal tales and twisting them into dramatic adventures, the boys began to get stoked about storytelling. Soon, I’d be receiving 6-10 page stories about dragons, aliens, or knights. The kids got so infected with the storytelling bug that even now, years after finishing up with them, I’m certain they’re still writing. And I caused that enthusiasm. That’s what true teaching is.

The other day, I met with this middle-aged woman from Singapore, consulting about the possibility of doing classes together. She’d brought this story outline for something she had to write for high school English, which she was being forced to complete in order to remain a teacher of Mandarin. I had a look at the outline and offered up a new point of view she might want to consider writing in. (From the POV of an object in her garden, essentially, in a story about her garden.) It wasn’t sheer brilliance, but I still managed to strike a chord in her.

It turns out that the woman is a painter, and a writer of Mandarin fine literature, and it’s been breaking her heart to not be able to express the things she feels in this language of her new home nation. She was frickin’ giddy when she left here. She’d blurted, “You’re so cool!” dozens of times as we discussed her story ideas, and each time I’d giggle. Not because I felt cool, but the idea of turning someone on and making them finally feel like they’re on track to expressing their artistic selves in a way that’s going to improve their quality of life in a new nation? Yeah, that’s pretty fucking cool.

But I’ve been lucky. All my jobs have had an edge of nobleness to them: bookseller, teacher, closed captioner (bringing entertainment to the hearing impaired), photography lab assistant professor, photo lab tech... I’ve always done things I could live with on every level, but I’d forgotten what it’s like when you get the chance to really improve people’s qualities of lives.

I may not be able to change the world, but I feel like I can change theirs, and that’s pretty fucking diggable.