"Hi, Kids!"

What other tutor teaches her kids about Agent Orange and napalm, huh? Huh?!

I do, I do!

I love stirring up the pot with my students. I get 'em thinking, get 'em charged. It's fun. I'm fast growing tired of teaching, mostly because the kids are forced to take my classes by their parents, so I do as much as I can to make 'em respond with "Wha?!" as it gets them excited about something, anything, and then I get better work out of them.

It's weird, they come to me with questions about sex and drugs and politics and culture, and I just answer everything as nonchalantly as I can. God knows their parents won't. I even had one parent bring out a biology book with pop-up images of the human body (like some things need pop-up images for 8-year-olds, huh?) and asked me to teach them all the English words about the anatomy.

"And that is your penis. Boys sometimes will call it their dink, their pee-pee, and their willy."

Some days, it's just too damned weird. But it's the autonomy I like. I can teach this stuff. The kids, they love it, so they'll never tell their folks. The parents love it 'cos the kids don't mind being forced into class. What a weird, weird circle, man.

So, yes, today's class included discussion on the attrocities of Vietnam, the legacy of napalm and Agent Orange, and what being ignorant of world events can lead to. They're 12 and 14.

This certainly made an impression.

Sure, it's not Mary Poppins and Barney, but, fuck, man... ignorance is an epidemic with kids today. I remember being 11 and having my father bring home a book about slaves who'd escaped America via the Underground Railway, back in the day, and it woke me the fuck up about the realities about humanity; what some people were willing to do (and were forced to do) in order to escape man's inhumanity. I am who I am today partly because of that book, and because of the time my mother sent me over to a legless Indian on the streets to give him a $2 bill. He bent over, literally kissed my feet, and started sobbing out a prayer of thanks. It shook me to my core. I was 12. I started really seeing things around me then.

I know kids need to be young and have fun, but they can do so while understanding the hardships faced by other peoples, during other times, in other places, and in these times, with these people, in this world. I believe, in fact, that it enriches the life they lead as a result. And why not? Knowing what you have is better than being ignorant about what others don't.

Yep. All in a day's work, man.