Why Speak English?

WHY SPEAK ENGLISH?

He'd say, "Hell, no, we've been learning English since before I can remember, we're American, but you've been speaking this tongue for the past twelve months, and I'm thinking that if you insist on letting us communicate, maybe you should also be teaching us that language."

And that would be that.

We'd leave the classroom that day, and that's how my final year with him went.

He wouldn't give up though.

On one Friday, my English teacher came to the office.

I hadn't seen her in three or four days, but I got called to the office anyway.

"There is no Friday," she told me, "You're the only one here, and I was wondering if you could show up the next day, and we'll see how it goes."

My reply was, "Well, the two most important things in my life are English and movies, I'm going to tell you what I need.

For English, I need a projector, sound system, table, and eleven professional grade DVD players.

For movies, I need a choice of a dozen or so DVDs, and a handful of Disney cartoons."

There were fifteen of us, and I was the first to be taunted in the teacher's office, and the last to see him alive.

I didn't know how well it would work out, but I decided to risk it.

Unfortunately, you can't really bluff when it comes to bullshit, so we moved onto watching the Bible (actually, my argument was that he'd never shown us the original Bible, we were stuck with whatever they'd recycled) before he decided that it wasn't going to work out, and he'd just teach us something else, I forget what he decided.

I was a bit surprised when he ended up using me as a translator during class after that, because, had I ever used a word other than "fuck" or "shit" in my life before, it would've been something in another language that I wouldn't have been able to translate for another person.

Thankfully, at the time, English was my best language, so I didn't really have to.

After that, things went downhill for him.

It seemed like he did his best work when he was hated, and he really got some hate on after calling an eleven year old a "fucking cunt" for selling his used textbook.

The next year was one of the best in my life.

I started making friends, I made headway on my language and socialization, and my first love (still my best friend and my best kisser), Kenny, moved to this school, where he made new friends and we hung out a lot.

His parents were wonderful, and his brother, Max, was a good friend as well.

We became notorious for throwing firecrackers at passing cars, or blowing up empty beer cans and hula hoops in the high school courtyard (which nobody seemed to really care about, but we still did it, all the time).

One of my most favorite memories with Kenny is something that never would've happened if my teacher had just let us speak English.

At the time, the school only had a couple of textbooks in the library, and I really wanted to read one of them.

I was under no illusions that I was ever going to see it again, so I wanted to read the damn thing.

I don't remember the exact reason why I wanted to read it, but it was to try and figure out what might be a very important lesson in my life.

This is when I realized that I can't quite remember exactly how much of my life I've spent taking the easy way out.

Why am I always the guy who gives up his dreams, even if the alternative was death?