Summer. School's out. Theirs, not mine. I'm teaching my ESL class in one of the long-lived temporary classrooms at the ALI. I have a mixed group of students from all over the place, Turkey to Brazil. It's a reading class, higher level. The students speak English well enough do to most of the things they might want to do. At the moment, they are in groups working on a vocabulary and comprehension worksheet.It's about 9:30 a.m. The door opens part way. One at a time, the boys squeeze through the narrow opening. I'm amused by the melodrama; there's no way they can sneak in.
Jimmy. Cut off work pants, cut off diving suit legs, worn Vans, stretched out white socks swinging around his ankles, T-Shirt, enormous grin. Craig, homemade Mohawk, wife-beater T-shirt, jeans, beat up Vans, safety-pin hanging from the lower lip of his grin. Mikey, his mom still dresses him. Jeans, boy's plaid button-down, undershirt, freckles, grin. Jason, tall, shirtless, a character from a Paul Newman movie, narrow hips, broad shoulders and strong abs from lifting the front end of the bike on jumps, wheelies, tricks.
I am grinning, too, at the expressions on the faces of my students. I don't think they've seen anything quite like this.
"How'd you get here?"
"We rode. We took the trolley from IB then rode from my mom's house up here."
That's twenty miles or so. I shake my head.
"How'd you find me?" I ask them.
"We asked at the office," said Jimmy.
Alrighty then. This lot has been to the office asking for me. Ah the stories about ourselves we never hear; this will be one of them, but I can imagine it. "I'm teaching, guys."
"Yeah, we know. We'll go outside."
My students protest and I think, "Hmmm, these are real, live Americans here, unique specimens." I say, "You want to help my students? They're working on a project -- wait, I have an idea. Put your stuff away," I tell my class. "We're going to do something different." I see the fascination in their eyes looking at the boys. I decide to capitalize on it. For some of these kids, it'll be their first conversation with an American; for all of them it will be their first conversation with Americans from the world the boys come from.
"Stay in your groups. I know you are wondering what these boys are doing here, how they're related to me, what they are like. OK, you guys, each one go join a group. Students, you can interview the boys and then I want you to work together on a paragraph about the person you interview."
I hear the questions, "How do you know our teacher?" "Why do you have a pin in your face?" "Do you go to school?" "How old are you?" "What do you study?" "Do you like America?"
In spite of the fact that every one of these boys has been short-changed in some way by the "American Dream" they defend their country to these "foreigners". "America is the best place to live," they say to Swiss, German, Turks, Brazilians, Japanese. It never crosses their minds that could be up for debate and might not win and, what's more, they themselves might be the evidence presented to refute it.
The boys ask questions, too. "What music do you listen to?" "Where do you live?" "Do you like it here?" "Do you know BMX?"
Class ends and no one has written anything. I'm proud of the boys, their good manners and gentility in answering some of the questions which were quite rude, actually, very personal. They front for their friend, me. If anyone says anything about them to me later, anything pejorative, they will have to fight me.
"Can we go to Mission now?" asks Mikey as we walk out of the classroom together.
"I can't. I have a meeting."
"Don't go."
I look at this splendid June day. I look at them, think of their long trek, and want to ditch. I want to practice anarchy right here, right now, but I'm still laboring under the illusion that I have a future in this place.
"Let's go get lunch. I have to hang out, but then we can do something." We go to McDonald's. After, they sit on the tailgate of my truck, waiting. One of my colleagues walks past my truck on his way to the meeting and takes the seat next to me when he arrives. "Are you in a gang, Martha? There are a lot of rough looking kids hanging around your truck."
I think that's hilarious. "Yes, John, I am in a gang."
"No, really, who are those boys?"
"That's my gang," I insist. "They are my friends. We're going to Mission Trails as soon as I'm done here." And, at that moment, I decide I'm done there. I put my things together and stand up. "I have an appointment," I tell my boss. "Sorry!"
I take the boys to Mission and then go home to change. I go back with Molly and the video camera, but most of the footage I take is with the lens cap on the camera. We eat pizza after and the boys spend the night at Colleen's. The next day I offer to take them back to IB. No one wants to ride; it's blistering hot. They pile in the back of the truck with their bikes. We have decided to go to the beach near Coronado because it's so hot and we've never gone to the beach together.
"Have you ever surfed?" asks Jason, who's sitting in the front seat for some reason I do not yet know, but will learn before long.
"No. Is it fun?"
"You'd love it," he says. "To bad we don't have a surf board."
"I know where we can get one," says Craig from the back of the truck. The window between is open to allow the air to circulate. My truck doesn't have air conditioning.
"Where?"
"I'll tell you when we get there."
We arrive in IB and Craig starts telling me, "Turn here, go down that street, up that street, go up that alley, down that alley" kind of thing. We stop in front of a house that has an open garage door. Slung from ropes on the ceiling is a long board. "Park here," says Craig. "We can use that one."
"Can you get it down?" asks Craig. Jason is over six feet tall; the others haven't had their growth spurts yet and are still not a lot taller than I am.
"Yeah, you wait there and catch it." Jason reaches from the back and slowly pushes the board toward Craig. Jason runs around and helps him as the board slides forward. They put it in the back of the truck and we head up the Strand to the beach.
Coronado is NOT a surfing beach, and it's a fairly flat day, but there's enough of a swell that the boys think I might be able to get a ride. Jason shows me how to get the board out behind the breaks and when to get up on it. I've body-surfed enough to understand how to find the spot on the wave that will carry me in. They all stay out there with me, past the breaks, waiting, waiting. I'm blind without my glasses and have learned to gauge when the wave is right by noticing changing relationship between ocean and sky. Perhaps all myopic surfers have the same method, I don't know.
"That one, that one, Martha, that one! Just get on all fours like a dog, OK? You don't have to stand up your first day!"
The wave comes. I turn my back toward it. I feel it begin to swell beneath me. I manage to get up on the board as I've been told and ride the small wave all the way in. I take the board back out.
"How was it? Did you like it?"
"I love it." I was ready to spend the rest of my life like that, but never again that day did a wave of any size approach the Coronado shore. Finally we give up, go in, and dig a hole in the sand, bury Jason to his neck and throw Cheetos at him as he tries to catch them in his mouth.
At the end of the day, back in IB, we wash the board at Jimmy's uncle's house before taking it back to the open garage door and hanging it where we found it.
"Do you know these people, Craig?" I ask, finally.
"Naw. Why?"
