Sunday, February 25, 2007

One Out of Many

Part of my job here is to be a good, upstanding representative of America, to help counteract bad press. (Britney Spears, I'm looking at you here: knock it off!) While sometimes I'm great at this--"you think all Americans love free sex? Congress pays me to tell you otherwise!"--at other times I worry what sort of generalizations my school colleagues are going to make. I feel a list coming on.

If They Judge By Me, The Teachers Will Think All Americans...
  • firmly believe orange and pink match
  • are willing to sing Arabic pop songs if asked
  • maybe even dance to them
  • speak passable Indonesian, but with a tendency to over/misuse colloquial particles
  • wear big, dangly silver earrings
  • can talk really fast
  • can't tell left from right
  • gesticulate wildly while explaining things
  • go to strange churches who, it is rumored, sacrifice newborn babies and drink their blood
  • don't get offended when asked if they drink baby's blood every Sunday
  • say the word "rad" with a straight face
  • giggle every time anyone says "get off." Or "ball-peen hammer," but that doesn't happen nearly as often, more's the pity
  • read, on average, a book a day
  • act "flirtatious," which can also be translated as "vain"
  • wear a pen behind their ear
  • forget that said pen is behind their ear and start looking for another one
  • complain endlessly about waking up so early
  • drop the whiteboard marker every fifteen minutes or so
  • don't like durian
(Actually, that last one may be true.)

I feel sorry for my replacement next year. Whoever you are, I just want to say this: have fun singing and dancing in the teacher's room. Brush up on your Amr Diab, if you can. Though they also like church songs--have you ever been to Bible camp? Oh, and don't try durian. You won't like it.

6 comments:

Melyngoch said...

I throw chalk. I don't mean to; it just flies out of my hand. Probably my students think this is a characteristic of medievalists.

Also, I think most Americans do complain about waking up so early. They just don't wake up at hours as unholy as you do.

Anonymous said...

Your list should be sent to the New York Review of Books personals. How can any American NOT want to marry you after reading a list like that?

alea said...

America could (probably) do worse.

Th. said...

.

Let's see....

check
check
check
nope
nope
check
check
check
check
check
check
nope
nope
nope
check
check
nope
check
don't know

JB said...

firmly believe orange and pink match

NOO!! Geez. Britney Spears does do THAT. ;)

JB said...

(I meant, "Britney Spears doesn't even do that.")