little gift

A boy in my fifth period class who never stops talking and rarely does work went to El Salvador two weeks ago. Today he brought me back a tiny wooden pumpkin with a fake bug inside. I wonder if he knows he just made my year.

News of the World

One summer I was a camp counselor, and I watched a ten-year-old look through the astrology section of a Star magazine. When he put it down, he looked sad. “Lindsay Lohan has cancer,” he said solemnly. “Because she was born in July.”
Sometimes I ask my students about current events. A good number of my students have doomed sentiments, and many are convinced the world is going to end. I’m not sure what sources they follow.
“I saw, miss,” a freshman girl tells me. “This psychic on tv said that everything was going to end. Not a psychic…not like brujerias or anything. This lady, she knows. There’s gonna to be an earthquake in October. She knows everything. She has predicted earthquakes before.”
“Where did you see her?”
“On the news. One thing’s for sure: in October, I’m going to be flying in a plane or something. I’m not gonna be here.”
“You’re going to be flying in a plane the whole month?”
“I saw something, miss,” another tells me. “On channel Thirty Four, miss. A little girl got raped in a public bathroom in the park.”
“I saw that too. It was on the news. A woman kicked a guy in the nuts. She was a lady, not a little girl.”
“David Beckham can’t play in the World Cup.”
“Did you know that there’s going to be a big earthquake? It’s going to end everything.”
I don’t usually believe their news stories, but when my bed shook violently on Monday morning, I clutched my pillow and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the end. “If this is it, let it come quickly,” I thought. Then when I opened my eyes everything was the same. The floodlight from next door was still shining through my window blinds. It was four in the morning near downtown and my roommates were in the kitchen in their underwear.
The next day my students couldn’t stop talking about it.
“I was up all night, miss. Out in the streets.”
“Did you know there’s going to be another one?”
“Did you know everything is going to end in 2012?”
“Hey miss, are you going to see the Bounty Hunter this weekend?”
“I don’t think so, it looks kind of bad,” I sad.
“Damn miss, you need to have some fun in your life,” he said. “You’re too amargada.” (Embittered.)
Damn right. I must be a grapefruit.
“Hey miss, I think you just ask us about the news because you want to know what’s going on in the world,” one sophomore said to me.
I guess he’s kind of right.