Boy Likes Girl

Hollywood did not invent scenes like the following:

Setting: 3:45 pm, midweek, second grade, the middle of the totem pole as far as school intelligence rankings go, and one of the more mischievous. Still, an enterprising and personality-driven group. Not the brightest crayons in the bunch, and certainly not the dullest.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:
Kevin is one of the smartest and most mature. His uncle works for Samsung (and he never lets anyone forget this). This is the young and unexpected lover, trying to win the damsel (GaEun's) heart.

GaEun (young damsel) seemed intelligent at first, and perhaps she is, but her homework and quizzes do not reflect this. She is a reader, though, and her pink roller backpack often doesn’t have room for the library she carries in her hand. She brought The Diary of Anne Frank during the first week of class after I mentioned in off-handedly during a vocabulary lesson.

Perhaps she is a dreamer, too.

Dong Ho’s quiet sensitivity could very well be gay. (In this story he witnesses young love and perceives what others his age might not). Really, this is neither here nor there, but seems the sort of appropriate brief literary observations that add to overall quality of writing. Unfortunately his quiet sensitivity could also mask complete stupidity. This has yet to be determined. The others are worth mentioning, but not here.

Dong Ho raises his hand and I settle in for a long, painful soliloquy.
Kevin drops a pencil and picks it up. As he stands back up, he slyly drops a piece of candy on GaEun’s desk.

Remember Disney’s rendition of The Jungle Book? When the girl at the watering hole drops her jug and Mowgli droolingly goes after it. “She did that on purpose,” says Baloo.

GaEun’s look of disbelief only spreads as she looks up at me and back at Kevin. Disbelief blushes into a gorgeous beam that explodes into a grin that would cause an artist working in that corner to rent his smock in anguish at the way the shadows lifted and the light changes when GaEun smiles.

She can’t stop.

Dong Ho’s painful monologue stutters on, but my rapture at this mid-class transaction overflows and I meet GaEun’s rapturous eyes and grin knowingly. Dong Ho’s stuttering ceases in a smile of relief. It seems his stuttering was a polite attempt to overcome the distraction of adolescent love during his academic pursuits.

Dong Ho could very well be gay.

Kevin, in typical non-plussed fashion, slyly eats candy out of his bag when he thinks we’re all still preoccupied.

The girls in the front of the room continue in their half-aware states. The boys in the back have yet to cease poking each other with pencils and papers and giggling idiotically about whatever it is they do.

I reassemble Dong Ho’s still unarticulated thoughts for him and continue with class but our triangle of knowingness: Dong Ho, GaEun, myself—we’re in better spirits for sharing this unpronounced moment.

GaEun puts the little IceBreaker, carefully, in her pencil case.