Blowing in the Wind

The Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) that I work with, Mr. Okanobu, is pretty good at English. At least, he's better than any of the other JTEs I have worked with in the past. Still, he makes mistakes, and occasionally these mistakes are amusing. Once in a while, they're even worth remembering and telling people about.

Today we were going through a bland, soul-crushingly boring story called "The Fall of Freddie the Leaf" with the 9th graders. As far as I can tell, this story was included in the textbook to continue the depressing atmosphere in the English classroom that was created in the 8th grade textbook when we had to teach A Mother's Lullaby. That story centered on a young girl and boy slowly dying after the bombing of Hiroshima. Then the next year they get a story about a leaf which includes the line (and this is a direct quote), "Everything dies." And yet, the kids aren't that excited to come to English class...

So, after a brief respite from the drudgery during which a student made a joke about Freddie the leaf being Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, the leaf (slicing off heads as he slowly floats to the ground) we got down to the business of examining the story grammatically. Near the end of the story, when Freddie finally dies, there is a sentence that reads, "Some of the leaves were blown off by a strong cold wind." In order to help explain how the sentence works, my JTE changed it to, "Mr. Kevin was blown off by a strong cold wind." He then blew some air at me. I, in my usual clown-like manner, pretended to have been blown against the wall by this. Two students grinned. Fun was had by all.

Anyhow, the point to all of this is that Mr. Okanobu then looked over at one of the better students, named Hikaru. He then looked right at me and said, "Mr. Kevin, please blow off Hikaru."



For the record, I did not.