Can I Get Your Number, Baby?

February 5, 2008

Photo by author

I’ve just turned twenty-two and I’m still in high school. This is my fifth year enduring the popularity contests, the mind games, the lunch groups, the bungling adolescents– just like Jerri Blank in Strangers With Candy I will see it all again. Only this time, I will be on the other side of the world. I will be on the other side of the desk. I will not understand a good ninety-five percent of what is going on around me. I will be a lone girl occasionally looking out over a sea of salacious teenage boys. I will be…an English teacher in Japan.

Although some students don’t seem to see it that way.

“Does anyone have any questions for our guest before we start? Communication is very important! Let’s try to communicate!” My desperate Japanese Teacher of English (JTE) looks out over a crowd of awkward, insecure teenage faces. Perplexed, they avoid eye contact with both authority figures in the room. Suddenly something extraordinarily engaging and enthralling appears either in their blank notebooks in front of them, or on their uniform, conformist shoes sitting flat and bored on the floor.

But then one hand shoots up determinedly.

“Yes, please go ahead,” says the JTE relieved that for once the onus is not on him to speak English.

A sixteen year-old Japanese boy immaculately dressed in a dark, crisp high school uniform stands up. In perfectly rehearsed and polished English he promptly states: “I would like to ask you out.” He grins impishly and somewhat suggestively.

My jaw drops. I am fascinated and taken aback, not by the content of his statement but by the perfect phrase he has managed to get out. The words flow naturally as if he has said it a million times before. Perhaps he has. Perhaps every Assistant Language Teacher that walks through that door gets propositioned. It is then that I notice a bit of telltale bright hot pink in his hands.

He is clutching the Japanese-Phrase-Book-Essential-To-Picking-Up-English-Speaking-Chicks, a pink manual full of gems that would sweep any girl off her feet. It includes choice expressions such as “Can I get your number baby? Hit me with the seven digits,” “You’re a knockout. Want to see my place?” and “Nice shoes…”

It has obviously been studied more than his pristine textbook. The binding is broken and the pages dog-eared. It’s his English bible – a pink book full of stale pick-up lines and phrases that perhaps a balding-middle-aged man might attempt to use in a bar full of young, pliant, inebriated college girls, only after having failed miserably on the Internet. Phrases that would succeed in scoring a guy the back of a girl’s head, a saucy flip of a ponytail, and nothing more. But I can’t help but be impressed and somewhat flattered.

The key to language is having something one wants to say. Pondering how Faux-Yuki is going to find her insipid way to the post office or an imaginary trite phone conversation between Fictitious Smithy Smitherson and Imaginary Mr. Honda, who ponder if they should or should not meet at three pm to watch paint dry, is hardly motivation to study. But asking out a teacher. Yes, this could potentially be more fun.

After a rousing game of Participle Pictionary, the class winds down and the teacher asks the students if they have any more questions.

My jailbait suitor promptly raises his hand. He has a surplus of lines to choose from – pages and pages of possibilities, the question is just finding the appropriate one.

He looks at me and his bright brown eyes gleam.

“YOU TOLD ME YOU LOVED ME!” he gasps.

My mind rifles through my memory trying to sort through a sordid list of people and places, names and events. My response is only natural, “Well, when was this?” I inquire.

The vehement denial that the boy was expecting does not come. He looks momentarily thrown as he realizes the next response is not going to come from his handy Pink Phrase Book O’ Love.

“Err… yesterday.”

“Really? Where were we?”

“Uhm… we…were…at school.”

“At school you say. What time was it?”

“It was… eleven o’clock.”

“And what did you say?”

After a brief hesitation he mumbles something in Japanese (the translation of which will forever be a mystery to me), smiles contentedly and sits down.

For a moment I consider asking him more detailed questions: “What were we wearing? What happened next?” Perhaps I should allow him opportunities to try out some more creative vocabulary. But the variables are too great and the possibilities dicey, so I leave it at that.

I am exceptionally proud of him. A complete sham of an encounter but we have managed to communicate the basics. If any newspaper reporter were to ask the five W’s: Who, What, Where, When and Why, we’d be able to generate a plausible story of our forbidden love.

After class the phrase book makes another appearance, this time in the hands of a different student.

“Let’s do coffee.” He favors me with a Cheshire smirk.

As a habitué of coffee shops I can hardly refuse. “Sweet. Let’s go.” I glance down at the open book in his hands. The next phrase reads, “Let’s play hooky.” Clearly, the publishers in Japan know their audience. Those textbook writers could learn a thing or two.

About the author:Nicole Cleary is an uprooted New Yorker currently teaching English on the island of Shikoku in Japan. She has a weakness for photographs, interesting words, techy gadgets, limericks, Latin, rainbow cookies, mythology, hippos and people who visit her website: http://www.nicolecleary.com