My school is the crazy. Really. I could go into detail but I am not sure you would believe it. Friday I slammed a kid into a wall outside the school while he screamed, "Let go of me! Let go of me!" (Which is, incidentaly, about all Japanese people ever scream in a fight.) An old woman stood and stared at us. The kid was one of four kids on bicycles. They aren't allowed to ride bikes to school. This same kid was part of a group of kids who, two days before, had been told to go home after school and had instead hung out on the grounds getting in the way of club practice, changing out of their uniforms, talking on their keitais, and entering and exiting the grounds by climbing over a wall and sneaking down a culvert. I don't play, I went after them. I caught the same kid in front of the school and told him to cut it out and use the front gate. I told the vice principal and I was supposed to talk to the group the next day at lunch. I was going to talk to them about way it pissed me off. That sometimes strange people jump fences into school yards and kill people, even in Japan. That teachers couldn't always tell who was who. I was going to tell them that when a teacher tells you to do something you do it. Instead of showing up for the talk, they went outside and played soccer. Assholes. I don't know how they get away with it. That same morning I had seen two kids coming to school on their bikes. I said, "Get off." They ignored me, laughing. I had to go to the elementary school so I couldn't do anything.
That brings us to Friday. Nakamura rounded the corner on his bike with 3 other kids as I was walking to school. He was on his keitai and didn't notice me. I crossed the street and 65% strong-saftied him into the wall. He deserved it. I thought about yanking his pink keitai and smashing it on the ground. However, having a keitai outside of school isn't really against the rules. Riding a bike to school is. I told him to get off his bike as his friends ran away. He got off after a bit of yelling. I had planned to drag him to school by his collar, but realized that everyone in the neghborhood was staring as they have no idea who I am, a foreign guy who has just shoulder charged a junior high student off of his bicycle. I let go of Nakamura and he snatched his bag away like he was ready to throw down. "Get the fuck to school!" I yelled. I walked the bike up to an assistant principle and told her what happened. Later that day Nakamura went downstairs and took his bike back. Sometimes I think I am alone in my battle. "You did a great thing." Inoue sensei told me. "Most teachers would have ignored them." Okay, maybe the two of us are alone in this battle.
Sorry to say that one month in I am pretty certain that I am going to hit a kid in school. I don't believe in that, but at this school I do. I really can't get across to you how rotten these children are.
2 comments:
Uuuuuh. Wes? Riding a bike to school? I understand that there must be some context to this that puts you in the "Children should be prohibited from riding their bikes to school because apparently someone made a rule about it, though that rule is never enforced" camp, but without the context it sounds pretty crazy.
I know it sounds crazy! I would never think that I would get worked up about it, but if you saw how it works, it would make sense. For one thing, the school is in the middle of a tightly packed city neighborhood. It has over 400 students. If everyone rode their bikes, clearly it would be a problem.
My larger problem is that most of the kids obey this rule. The ones that don't aren't disobeying it because they think it is a bad rule, they are diobeying it because they think that nothing that anyone says applies to them. They are the same kids who get up and leave in the middle of class. The same kids who will talk on their telephones when they know they aren't allowed. The same kids who will take anyones ball that they feel like and throw it somewhere because they can. The same kids who won't let any school function happen because it doesn't center around them and the fact that they don't have to listen to anyone. The same kids who will barge into the teacher's room and try to order adults around. The same kids who throw trash out the windows while everyone else is cleaning. The same kids who think that nothing applies to them.
That is why it pisses me off. Because it is unfair to every other kid who does what is asked of them. Because it makes the school a rotten place to be.
Someone might say, "Why can't kids order pizza after 10?" at camp. Or, "Why can't my kid have his cell phone and call me whenever they feel like it?" In other contexts, these things would be reasonable, but they make camp hard to run. Now say there was one group of kids who did this stuff anyway and if you reminded them that they couldn't they said, "Fuck you!" I know how that would go down...it wouldn't.
I wouldn't care if they could ride bikes, but they can't. I do care that they treat the school, the teachers and the other students with total disrespect. Their riding bikes aren't a reflection of their free spirits, it is a symptom of their total lack of respect for any rule.
If they were good kids, I would look the other way. Or warn them gently. But not these bastards.
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