The Language Student

Last night on the 104 bus (co-incidentally the identical no. as my house), the same bus I’ve caught home for the last year I couldn’t help but notice a little Asian girl, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, I don’t know, wish I did, but there’s a lot I don’t know. So there I am reading my book, when I here a pretty loud and not unnoticeable thud right in front of me, the little girl, with the sharp turn of the bus flew off her chair straight into the ground…face first, her legs to short to support her on the seat. I apologize now because I shouldn’t be laughing, but what a funny scene! She kind of gets up, more like is yanked up by her mother, who by this time is not sure whether she should laugh or scold her child for not holding on to the railing. Me? I’m laughing… but on the inside, the girl only starts crying afterwards because her mom has now decided that scolding her is the appropriate action.

Why does she start crying? To stop her mom from scolding? Because she thinks she should be crying? I don’t know, but shortly after she stops I hear what sounds like the alphabet being repeated by a drunk slurring 8 year old, only she’s not drunk and she’s not slurring, she’s repeating the sounds she was taught today, phonetically sounding out the alphabet, then comes the days of the week, wensdy, firsdy, saaaatrdy, firsdy, wensdy, firsdy, wensdy, satrdy, Sunday, I felt like telling her we also have mumdys and toosdys too.

In 25 years she’s probably going to be the CEO of some multi national corporation.