May 10, 2006 - kenshinjeff

why are you so white?

One of my more adorable students posed me this question. Being the kind of person I am, of course I gave the answer, “Because the sun doesn’t see me much”. To give her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she was expecting something like “I use whitening products”, or “I’m anemic”, or “I was born this way”. Pretty weird question I’ld say.

The next question was slightly more interesting. “How come you can study and teach at the same time?” I was very tempted to say the truth, which is “That’s because I oversleep for most lessons, and I don’t do any homework”. Now, being a teacher, I am obligated to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, or something like that. But the way I see it, no one’s really paying much attention in class, and it would pretty much have an adverse effect on the attention span if I were to tell the truth.

I pretty much replied “Oh, my lessons are mostly in the morning, and your lessons are in the evenings”, which came with my trademark smile. Point being, I adverted the question by giving a somewhat correct kind of answer.

I’m pretty sure that there’s a term in lawyerspeak for this kind of communication. I would say, most of the time this works. Probably because people who ask don’t really want to know the truth behind the statement, but rather, to fulfill the need to know.
As incredible as it sounds, it has been proven that it works:

• My dog ate my homework.
• My lost it!
• More to come

incomplete / interesting stuff / logic & ideology

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