I could
write a compelling profile of many of my students at Anuban Songkhla, and I
feel so fortunate to be interacting daily with such a fun, caring, interesting,
intelligent group of kids. I suppose at the end of my time here I'll write a
little something about each of them because they're such a dynamic group, and I
want you all to get at least a peek into a Songkhla child's life. But there's
one student of mine who I'd like to dedicate a whole post to, though he certainly
isn’t a good representation of a “typical” student. But I’ve spent a lot of
time with him over the last five months, so I'm going to step-out of my usual
recounting routine and put my creative non-fiction training to work for a post
(shout out to Dr. Rick Barot for weaseling your way into my head during times
like these).
Phufa
(pronounced Poof-uh) Somchanakit is seven years old and would like everyone to
know that he has a real job every Saturday and Sunday. He works at a place
called Blue Smile Cafe where they make really good pizza and have a lot of
different kinds of drinks and there's a Canadian guy named Paul who cooks in
the back. Phufa even has a shirt and everything. One time his mom hadn't done
the laundry so his shirt wasn't clean and he couldn't go to work, because
everyone knows you need your uniform to go to work. He was sad about it, but being
professional is very important to him. Phufa would also like everyone to know
that his favorite food is spaghetti.
“My mom
says I’m fat and I need to go on a diet,” Phufa says, looking disappointedly down
at his stomach then to the chocolate milk in his hand. “Maybe I’ll jump rope a
bit.”
We’re in
my office during lunch time, and I keep the PE equipment (four plastic balls,
five jump ropes, and one hula hoop for 35 kids) behind my desk, so he trades me
his milk for a jump rope and sets to work as I continue writing. He’s not fat—true,
he’s not stick-thin like a lot of my kids, but he’s short and compact, an
energetic and jolly “little drummer boy” one of my coworkers fondly started
calling him around the Christmas season. I doubt Joe was envisioning the cute
little selfless lad going to play for baby Jesus—think a little more along the
lines of the energizer bunny.
I was
warned by coworkers back in October about Phufa before I'd ever met him. Yes,
he speaks English like a little native child and can translate anything you
want to the whole class, but he's such a handful, it's easier to run the class
without him. He's dramatic. He's a baby. He believes he deserves special privileges
because of his English skills. He probably has the English vocabulary of a
native speaking 9-year-old but he bursts into tears and bangs his head on the
desk when he breaks his pencil. All of these things turned out to be true. But
I've since learned there's quite a bit more to him than that.
More than
anything, Phufa just wants to talk to people. In English. There are four Filipino
and two other native English-speaking teachers at my school, but somehow, I’m
the one who Phufa really hit it off with. It may have had something to do with
the fact that I knew all the weird American TV shows he was obsessed with and
need chocolate on the daily almost as much as he does. So, mid-November, Phufa
started buying two chocolate milks at the student store every day during lunch.
Like clockwork, he appears in my office at 11:45, and we kick back in our
plastic blue chairs, sip our chocolate milk through those ridiculously tiny
straws they glue to the side of the carton, and we discuss the latest topic of
interest. Our conversations range from Pixar movies to greatest fears, from the
technicalities of piano playing to Phufa’s unsuccessful dating life (“She just,
didn’t even return my note”). One day, Phufa spent lunch telling me all about
the bot fly, which is some parasitic, absolutely disgusting creature I now know
much more about than I really wish to. When we can’t think of anything to talk
about, we tell jokes, because Phufa loves jokes. Sometimes I find a website
online and we take turns passing my phone back and forth and reading them to
each other, though sometimes such jokes have punch-lines that utilize words
like “canoe” or “hipster” or “Noah’s Ark,” and we decide to just make up jokes
ourselves.
“Okay, I
really have to use the bathroom, can you finish interviewing me later?” Phufa
asks, throwing down his jump rope and inching towards the door.
“Only if
you take your toothbrush with you, dude,” I say, holding up a plastic bag with
a green case in it. “This is like, strike 13. Teacher Joe’s started a tally.”
“Ah, c’mon,
no way!” Phufa laughs, snatching his bag from me. “I remember it most of the
time.”
“Uh huh,
sure, Phufa.”
“Oh my
god!” Phufa doubles over, holding his stomach and laughing hard enough to be in
a scene of a soap opera or silent movie. Half the time I don’t know why Phufa’s
laughing, but it always makes me crack up too.
#
Phufa's
mind is a fascinating smorgasbord of American and Thai pop-culture references
that never ceases to confuse, concern, and entertain. One time, after discussing
the finer points of the TV show, Adventure
Time, Phufa asked me, "Do you want to go to heaven or hell?" I
sort of cocked my head and thought for a moment, since I was apparently being
given a choice in the matter. "Well, I guess I'm not sure," I said.
"Why don't you make a solid case for me? What do you think they're
like?" Phufa elaborated as follows: "I think that in heaven you can
eat whatever you want—you can have KFC every day! And ice cream! In hell,
there's a big pot over a fire, and you don't want to get in the pot, and if you
call out for your mom and dad, they won't hear you cuz they're in heaven. Yeah,
I think I would chose heaven, Also, you get to meet all the gods in
heaven--like Zeus and Jesus and Buddha...that would be so cool! Not Satan, though--I
don't want to meet him. I've seen pictures, and he's freaky." I decided to
agree upon the Satan point and let the rest go.
Although
his world collides and combines in interesting conversations like these, sometimes
it seems like Phufa is living two lives. After weeks of begging, Phufa finally
convinced me to come visit him at Blue Smile Café one Sunday. Blue Smile is a
hip, friendly café with murals painted on the outside and art for sale on the
inside. It’s owned by a Thai woman and her Canadian husband, so you can get
amazing massaman curry AND Belgian waffles with real maple syrup. I have to
give Phufa the credit for making me a regular, but who can resist a place that
has Jenga, Wednesday movie nights, fresh baked goods, and a rooftop lounge?
El, one
of the co-owners of Blue Smile just laughs and shakes her head whenever I talk
to her about Phufa. The boy had been hanging around so much after they first
opened that she’d told him he was going to have to work there if he kept
showing up. Phufa, of course, didn’t realize this was a joke and was elated by
the idea, despite El’s reactionary skepticism. “What can you do?” She asked
Phufa. “Like, can you serve, or cook, count the money?” Phufa shrugged his
shoulders and said enthusiastically, “I can be an entertainer!” So, he showed
up every Saturday and Sunday religiously to bother Paul—the other co-owner—in the
kitchen, El, whose English is very good, or anyone else who will talk to him in
his special language. The only times he didn’t show up was when his official
t-shirt wasn’t clean, because, as aforementioned, he didn’t feel he could go to
work without it. After learning that’s why Phufa hadn’t shown up one weekend, El
sat him down and told him he didn’t have
to work at Blue Smile; he was welcome to just come and hang out. Unfortunately,
Phufa thought this meant he was fired. He didn’t show up for two or three weeks
and was inconsolable until El went to his house and cleared the
miscommunication.
Being at
Blue Smile Café is a sort of extension of Phufa’s English life at school with
me and the TV shows and YouTube videos he watches at home. He can say things
like, “Holy sweet mother of god!” when he’s really surprised (when he found out
my dad and sister were visiting Thailand in December) or “That’s a damned lie!”
(can’t remember, pretty sure it was aimed at Teacher Joe). But after our third
meeting at Blue Smile, Phufa dragged me down the street to his house, where he
isn’t wonder boy, he’s not an over-the-top cartoon character, he’s just another
boy who lives in Songkhla.
El told
me that when Phufa speaks in English, he’s brash, full of energy, and dramatic—he
emulates what he sees in his favorite American TV shows. But when he speaks in
Thai, he is very quiet and polite. I really experienced that for the first time
when I visited his home.
Like most
Thai homes in Songkhla, Phufa’s house is connected seamlessly with the building
next to it, so you almost miss the gate that lets you in. One of his two high school-aged
brothers let us in, and led us through a dimly lit patio space where we took
off our shoes and entered the house. Phufa greeted his mother and explained in
Thai who I was, though I’m sure she knew exactly who I was, seeing as white
girls don’t just show up at your house very often cuz there are only like six
of us in Songkhla. She was short, like Phufa, and had the same round face and
smiling eyes, but she looked much softer. She clearly wasn’t one of those moms
that wears the fashionable sunglasses and skinny jeans, cowering under their
umbrella to keep their skin from darkening by the sun, so I liked her
immediately. Also, she gave me watermelon, which is always a way to win me
over.
She and
Phufa exchanged some words, Phufa explained to me, “She doesn’t really know
English,” and he translated to me that she apologized for how messy the house
was. I told him there was no need for her to apologize, and it was perfectly
fine she didn’t know much English because he knew how rubbish my Thai was. He
just laughed and let me into the living room.
You
wouldn’t guess by Phufa’s house that his father is a fairly well-off engineer.
I’ve learned that Thai’s spend their money on technology, nice cars, and their
children’s education, so I wasn’t surprised, but somehow it did seem odd to see
Phufa living in such an average space. The light-blue room we found ourselves
in was small and crammed with piles of papers, stacks of books, an electric
keyboard, a computer desk, and a couple of chairs. There was hardly room for
the two of us to sit on the floor. We found a space right by a wooden staircase
where Phufa keeps an enormous stack of English board games. He showed me a few
science games in English on his ipad and then pulled out his favorite board
game, a sort of fairytale mix-and-match storytelling game, which we actually played
for an hour and I really enjoyed. But as we laughed over Red-Riding Hood losing
her shoe at the ball and falling down a beanstalk, I couldn’t help but wonder—who
plays all these games with him when I’m not here?
#
While I know
how to interact with Phufa outside the classroom, in class, sometimes I’m
stumped. He doesn’t always understand that our private conversations can’t
carry on during class time. He also assumes that because he speaks the
best English, he actually has a right to talk to me more than the other 34 students,
and this drives me insane. I’ve recently found a balance, where, for
example, Phufa will write out the symbol to about 15 periodic elements and
every time I walk by him to call on a student or show a flashcard, I’ll point
to one and make a guess. He’ll then check and either add or subtract to my
tally as I continue on with the rest of the class. But every time we play a
game, and I don’t call on him, he yells out in his distinct countertenor, “Oh,
c’mon!!” and pouts. Usually it won’t go beyond that, but Phufa has become known
for his royal-sized temper tantrums in MEP 1, which make me look pretty good as
a 7-year-old, and I was almost as dramatic as Phufa.
One of
Phufa's famous outbursts took place during the PE lesson where I introduced
jump ropes to the class. I guess it's been a while since first grade, because I
dumbly assumed everyone in MEP 1 would know how to jump rope. To be fair, there
were some kids who really had it down, and then there was Nut, who would flop
the rope in front of him, pass it with one hand around his back to the other,
jump, and call it good. Phufa tried and failed. Multiple times. He couldn't
quite swing the rope over his head correctly, and frustration turned into tears
which turned into wailing and stomping and yelling, transitioning into flailing
on the ground. The rest of the class just looked on with a sort of quiet,
all-knowing sobriety in their faces, as if they were watching a beached whale.
Pang nodded to me and said very observantly, "Phufa very angry." This
was a statement she would find herself repeating to me on several
occasions.
The next
day, when Phufa arrived in my office at lunch, and we'd spent a few minutes
drinking our chocolate milk in silence, I noticed him looking at the jump ropes
in the corner. "Do you want me to teach you?" I asked. "No, I
just can't do it," Phufa whined with a grimace. "Not with that
attitude," I replied (Eric, be proud). "You have to practice. Come
on. We'll go step by step." Phufa whined some more but stood up when I put
the jump rope in his hand.
We spent
the next ten minutes perfecting his stance, positioning, hold on the handles,
and swinging technique. I wouldn't let him jump at all. Finally, when he could
consistently get the rope to arrive at his toes correctly, I had him step over
the rope slowly and repeat. We progressed to jumping fifteen minutes in. By the
end of lunch, Phufa could jump 20 times in a row without a single mistake and
the next week of lunch he spent at least 20 minutes straight jump-roping behind
my desk until he collapsed in a puddle of sweat on the chipped, linoleum tiles.
I am now proud to say that Phufa counts jump-roping as one of his "top
skills." Along with English and saving the earth.
The story
of Phufa and the Jump Rope illustrates one of the major reasons why Phufa can
be so difficult; he's used to everything coming easy to him. He can't handle
failure because he hardly ever has to handle it. The other reason he is
difficult is because he's been spoiled beyond belief--he's the youngest of
three, he's coddled by the school and community because he makes them look
good, and he's told on the daily he's special because of his unique linguistic
talents. I had a class interrupted one day by eight members of Anuban
Songkhla's administrative team who came in and proceeded to praise and
interview Phufa in the back of the class about his regional English competition
win the weekend before. They were literally petting him for twenty minutes.
During my class time. I couldn't teach over that, because of course all my kids
were trying to get in on the action, and I was furious. But this is where his
entitlement stems from, this is why he says, "Oh, she can't solve that
problem--she's not very smart--I'll do it!" during a demonstration in math
class. This is why the concept of focusing on where your hands and feet are
before you jump was so foreign to him.
As much
as his ego frustrates me, it worries me even more.
On one of
our lunch dates in Blue Smile Cafe, Phufa asked who my best friend was. I told
him about a couple of my closest friends, and he asked about their jobs and
what they looked like. So then I asked him who his best friend was.
"Hmmm....well, you, I guess!" he said with a big smile. I wish I
could say I returned the same innocent smile, but I had to grin through
clenched teeth and a breaking heart. "Really?" I asked.
"Definitely," he said confidently. "Probably you and this guy I
know on the internet from Malaysia who I think is 10." I thanked him, and
probed a little bit more until he admitted that his best class friend was
probably Porpeang, who is a student I really like, but who I doubt returns as
much friendship to Phufa as my little buddy assumes.
I watch
the way the other students in MEP 1 interact with Phufa. They know he reads
English better than Thai, and they know he'd rather talk to me than them. They
know he watches The Simpsons on
YouTube in his free time instead of playing with them outside. They tell me to
call on him during games even when they so desperately want to be called on
themselves, because they'd rather see him receive special treatment than deal
with his wrath if he isn't chosen. In fact, they expect him to receive special
treatment, and this is what ostracizes him from them. Phufa's too young to know
it, and his classmates are too young to understand it, but unless his attitude
changes, he's on a lonely path to success through abandoning his culture for
mine.
The ego
and elitism that come with Phufa’s preening and success scare me, especially
because he’s still young enough to possess an innocent sweetness, love of
learning, and sense of humor that makes him truly fun to be around. He’s the
only Thai I’ve ever met who’s seriously concerned about recycling because of
what garbage can do to the environment. After listening to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in music class, he declared
it “totally EPIC!” and made me write down the composer’s full name for him so
he could Youtube him later and listen to other work he wrote. And whether I’m
there or not, there’s always a little plastic bag on my desk with a chocolate
milk in it at 11:45.
For
Christmas, I had my dad send me a joke book from Barnes and Noble for Phufa.
Phufa unfortunately came down with Dengue fever, and was out for two weeks, but
after the New Year’s holiday, when he was feeling better, he showed up for
lunch and I pulled out the wrapped gift. He stared at me with his huge brown
eyes and said, “Is this a Christmas present? For me?”
“Ummm no,
this is for my invisible friend Frankie,” I said. Phufa doubled over, laughing,
as he does. “No, silly, it’s for you.”
“Oh my
god,” Phufa said, regaining composure but immediately shifting back to shock. “I’ve
never gotten a present before. This is my first present! OH MY GOD!”
Birthdays
are very different here than in the states, but I was still shocked that Phufa
had never received a present before. I handed him the package and he just sort
of stared at it with an emotion that made elation look almost like it was
bordering on fear.
“Do I open
it now?” he asked tentatively.
“Yup,” I said.
“Go for it.”
Phufa
carefully peeled off the tape and unfolded the corners of the cheap green
wrapping paper I’d picked up at 7/11 that morning.
I wish I knew
how to capture in words Phufa’s face when he saw the book. But I simply can’t.
It was on par with watching Charlie discover the 5th golden ticket
to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
I’m
pretty sure he said “Oh my god!” at least nine times, and “A joke book? It’s a
joke book!” at least three. Then he said, “Am I dreaming? Because if I am I'm
going to be so angry!" That one made me laugh, and I assured him that he
definitely wasn’t dreaming. He flipped the pages back and forth and said, “I
think I'm going to cry!”
So before he could, I turned the
book to page 1 and we told jokes for about 35 minutes until I almost made him
late to class, but didn’t, because I’m not a crappy teacher like that. So I watched
him skip off to show all his friends, who I knew wouldn’t understand a single
word of the book, but who I hoped would at least be excited for him.
Nut (left) and I had an unfinished conversation about Star Wars one day, so he followed Phufa (middle) up to my office during lunch to confirm that Jabba the Hutt was indeed the best bad guy in the series.
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