10/28/2020
Abstract
My first essay in Phase 1 is about how I narrated myself in third person point of view. This represented an important time of how my actions had negatively impacted my future in my language and as a person. This is the story of my regrets and how these actions came with a cost.
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Boredom is going through his mind right now. Listening to others speak a language that is almost unknown to his feeble brain saddens my heart. His eyes loosely stare at the teacher unable to comprehend the gibberish that is on the chalkboard. To him, it was just a bunch of chicken scratch that seems to have no significance to him, he could have been at home sleeping like a bear or watching Saturday morning cartoons on channel eleven. But no, he had to be at Chinese school early in the morning at eight-thirty in the morning every Saturday and only the holidays were his lifesaver to avoid Chinese school or getting sick to some unknown pathogen.
Time ticks by very slowly and he was fiddling with his tin pencil case filled with freshly number two Ticonderoga pencil that the tip was so sharp that it was able to puncture a hole in his eraser with ease. The teacher continued to blabber on with the useless book in her hand while he was sitting in the corner in the back of the classroom, hidden from the view of the teacher he hides behind his trusty backpack and uses the shield of students to do whatever he wanted. While others listened like obedient dogs obeying their master, the young boy who had fiddled with the pencil to his satisfaction looked back at the clock to hope that break time was almost there. But, his hopes were shot down when the large minute hand had not moved much at all, it was nine o clock and only five minutes had passed while he was mindlessly poking holes in the eraser to relieve him from his boredom.
So, what he did next was by no surprise that he took his crisped pencil and started to draw in the small skinny Chinese textbook and used the pictures to entertain his imagination. He continued to draw and while he was drawing the teacher was creeping around to make sure that her students were attentive and not sleeping on the table like some hobo on the street. By the time she had made her rounds she catches the young boy in the corner of the classroom drawing stick figures, disfigured humanoids, and other fantasy animals that she snatches the book away from him. She begins to say in Chinese “what are you doing drawing in the textbook and not paying attention to the board”? and he doesn’t say a word since every student in class starts to stare at him and the teacher to listen in on their conversation. He feels embarrassed and his face begins to turn red like a tomato that his eyes begin to tear up a bit. The teacher feels the stares of the students and doesn’t want the student in front of her to begin crying like a baby, so she says “please pay attention in class and erase all of these drawings up or you will fail this class”. After that conversation, the teacher grabs his backpack to place it on the ground with no warning and gathers the attention of the class to flip to the next page.
Meanwhile back to the boy, he felt miserable and infuriated that he was caught by the teacher to only be embarrassed. He held tears that almost leaked out of his eye because he did not want others to see him as a cry baby. Taking his punctured eraser, he began to erase all the creations that he had just made, and soon the pages of the textbook had turned back to its original color. He thought to himself after he had finish erasing all of his creations on how he hated this stupid language and how he wanted to burst out of this cage that he was trapped in and run far, far away. However, he could not, since where could a ten-year-old boy go to with no money or any knowledge of the area. So, the only option that he had was to only stay in class and wait until it was break time where the students had about thirty minutes to an hour to do whatever they wanted, and then it was time to go back to learning Chinese.
The young boy had pretended to pay attention to the teacher’s lecture that she was spewing out for fifty long minutes, he stares at the green dusty chalkboard that had been littered with chalk pieces left to right. He did not understand a word that the teacher had said, and the textbook was just nothing but alien to him. Finally, enough time had passed for the boy to experience a taste of freedom when the teacher allowed the class an hour of free time. From there the boy gleefully went out of the classroom to see other classes also take breaks. For a moment in the boy’s mind, he was just happy that he did not have to learn this useless language that seemed far too complex for his mind. After he had taken his time in the men’s bathroom, he had strolled back to his classroom to see the other boys play the card game Yugioh and had taken a looked at their game. From there the card game had seemed very interesting but in the boy’s eyes, he liked the variety of colors that were on the cards and was awed by the cool images that were shown on the cards. However, that was soon shutdown when the teacher had announced that it was time to go back to class and so everyone went back to their seats to flip to the page that she had assigned for them.
The boy was saddened that time was over and thought to himself why his parent force did him to go to Chinese school when he did not even want to learn this language. He wondered why his parents did this to him was it to make him suffer or was it to make him hate his parent. The thought had continued to bother him, and he propped the textbook to his stomach to make sure that the teacher did not suspect that he was doing anything suspicious. He continued to think of why his parents did this and he already knew some of the basics of Chinese from his parents so why did he have to go to this terrible school. The more he thought about it the more he started to grow hatred to his parents and the language. Time somehow flew by and the bell rang out loud making students scrambling to pack their books while the teacher was telling them the homework. The boy had copied the assignment and rushed out of the classroom before others could sense it would cram up the exits.
When the boy had ran down the stairs to meet his mother, he had forgotten his hatred and asked his mother what was for lunch. From there they walked away from the school that the boy hated. A few years later the books that the boy was learning from are now in a drawer hidden away and collecting dust over the years that it had not been touched. So many textbooks and yet he had learned nothing. The boy had cheated and lied his way through to the only regret all the things that he had done in the past. He regretted the fact that he was always hidden in the back of the classroom where the teacher could not see his tiny child body. He regretted not paying attention to the teacher’s advice to only disobey her. He regretted that he was illiterate in Chinese. He regretted that he cheated. He regretted the embarrassment of his parents and siblings. He hated that he was a child that paid no attention at all in class and decided to only fool around like a dumb idiot to only progress further in the language with no knowledge or any of the basics.
That young boy was me and I only come to regret the past and wish to change it all, but the past cannot be changed only the future. When I try to anyone I can only mumble lowly a few words or barely a sentence of Chinese. It is an embarrassment when others find out that you barely know the language and I hate myself for it. Those textbooks are a reminder of my past mistakes, a reminder that will continue to bother me until I can learn to speak properly and write Chinese. Right now, I wish I was able to turn back time, to fix those moments like instead of fiddling with a pencil I would have changed that to use the pencil to create words and the eraser to clear any mistakes that I make while writing or even getting appraised by the teacher for working diligently. I must remind myself that others go through the same feelings no matter the event or situation. Others will understand regret and will have that idea of wishing to change the past, but the past is set in stone but not the future. In every life, we have to understand the fact that our actions have short term and long term effects that we as people need to take into consideration.
