Connecticut

Teaching summer school is still the best job I have ever had. Today I finished teaching at noon. Yesterday I started at 10:15. Tomorrow we are going bowling and then watching a movie. The students chose “Hancock”.

There is a Japanese boy, Haruka. Whenever America is mentioned, he says, “how about Connecticut?” For example, today Ing said she was going to San Francisco, Chicago and New York for sightseeing. Haruka asked, “Are you going to Connecticut? You should go to Connecticut.”

Finally I asked him, “Why are you obsessed with Connecticut?”

"Because it's nice. I used to live there."

“Really? What part?”

“Greenwich.”

“Oh, I used to live in Greenwich,” I told him, “I went to Greenwich High School.”

“REALLY?!?!” He was amazed. “I went to EMS.”

“EMS??” I asked. It sounded like an ambulance service.

“Eastern Middle School.”

“Oh,” I told him, “when I was a kid, they called it Eastern Junior High.”

“Did you hear the principal resigned?” he asked. These poor kids have no idea how old their teachers are.

“No, but you must have lived in Riverside or Old Greenwich,” I surmised.

“Yes, Old Greenwich. 4 Highview Avenue.”

“Oh, I went to Old Greenwich Elementary School,” I told him.

“REALLY?!?!” He was amazed again. “I am a graduate of there.”

I have never heard anyone refer to himself as a graduate of an elementary school, but times are changing.

“I didn’t graduate,” I told him, “I was expelled. In fact I think I was the first kid ever expelled from Old Greenwich Elementary School.”

The kids were intrigued; they made me tell the story of how I got expelled . . .