Love is truly all around us. And bromantic fifth grade love is one of the best kinds. I teach ESL in South Korea to 5th grade boys. Jayden is super passionate about his (fairly high end) mechanical pencil collection. Of course his peers call it an obsession. He's endearingly geeky about it. He has a Youtube channel in which he reviews specific makes and models of said writing tools. He refers to them by their specific titles and edition numbers, and follows "etiquette" like "Never use the tiny eraser that comes with a mechanical pencil; it is a barbaric and rude thing to do to the pencil." His Christmas list to Santa was all mechanical pencils by year, make, and model. On his breaks, he tinkers with them and fixes them and explores their parts and innards. He's a stylish, good looking, hardworking kid, but a little bit awkward and has gotten the brunt of some bullying in elementary school. While he seems to be balancing and gaining more social confidence, I can see the parts of him that make him vulnerable to other kids' teasing. One of those things is how protective of his collection he is. One of the first things he told me about himself is how upset he gets when kids steal his pencils.

Anyway, there's another boy in this class, Dennis. Jayden gave him a gift, one of his coveted pencils, one that cost like 30 bucks. (That's a higher quality pencil than I've ever owned. And I though the $9 Dr. Grip ones were the peak of luxury in my day... Apparently the most expensive pencil in the world costs $12,000.) It comes up every week that Jayden gave Dennis the pencil. Dennis said he watched like all of Jayden's 13 pencil review videos on Youtube and pretty much uses the swanky higher end pencil during every class. He and the other boy, Harrison showed me the difference between Harrison's regular, $5 mechanical pencil, whose included eraser he intentionally abuses as Jayden looks on, cringing. Harrison's like "It was free, so I don't care." Lol... I don't think Harrison's going get gifted a special pencil like Dennis was... plus he gives Jayden a little bit of shit for his hobby. So I was told to toss Harrison's common low end pencil up in the air and "feel how it lands." I tossed it and promptly dropped it, although for what it's worth my hand-eye coordination is abysmal. And then Dennis is like "Now try my $30 one." It rises and falls at a perfect 90 degree angle from the table and lands cleanly in my hand like a rocket nestling back into its launch pad. "See? It's weighted very precisely to be balanced." And so began my education on the difference between a $5 mechanical pencil and an ergonomic, anti-gravity precision weighted $30 one...

Jayden was absent today but as a class we looked at everyone's essays and Jayden accidentally wrote Dennis's Korean name on his paper instead of his own name. It was clearly not intended, like it was subconsciously done the way we do things when we're thinking about another person. Harrison and Dennis couldn't stop awkward-giggling about it. It was a funny faux pas on the surface, and yet it reminded me of all the times in my life where I have been so utterly grateful to a person for a small thing that they did that catalyzed something comparably huge in my understanding of my own self worth and there was no socially appropriate place to express my gratitude for them and so it would just cycle through my mind unspent, like having cash to blow but nowhere to spend it until eventually the coins get dropped in the grass when I'm mindlessly turning cartwheels.

It's cute and bromance-y, the affection that these boys have for each other even though they see each other only a couple of times a week and they haven't known each other all that long and they're all somewhat shy initially and so their academy friendships were slow burners. Jayden is a kid that's quite sensitive and also incredibly authentic, living in a world that judges and ridicules him for it and so he lives with a lot of self conscious, frustrated tension. And he sees Dennis who is just the epitome of level-headed, chill, cool and non-judgmental towards him and he went and honored that in the best way he knew how, by giving him one of his precious pencils and the way Dennis responded by really Seeing the personal value and generosity of the gift and displaying it with pride again and again. Jayden was giving a symbolic part of himself to Dennis in gratitude for how Dennis helped Jayden remember that he is worthy of acceptance and kindness. It fills me with Love to see the ways they appreciate and honor each other that seem small and subtle but are actually quite huge and significant.

I'm always incredibly moved by this class. While Jayden arrived at his own free will, already wise to how the bigger picture involves one universal tongue, Harrison and Dennis used to always complain about academy, complain about studying English, complain about difficulty even though they are some of my most proficient students, try to weasel extra break time minutes. In the beginning their effort was perfunctory, and yet nowadays, they always show up 110% and give all of themselves, mentally and emotionally. Because they are all so fluent, that makes our 2-3 hour long classes absolutely brimming with critical thought, depth and insight. Eventually they both stopped complaining about academy and they've almost stopped complaining about homework even. I think a part of them, the highest part of them, realized that eventually English classes aren't supposed to be just another academic expectation, that language is merely a vehicle for creation and connection and awareness of Self and that collective consciousness can be seeded and sown.

They all are, particularly Harrison, completely opposite of the passive, robotic, crowd-following, memorization-driven, stereotypical Korean students. They are pretty damn savage free thinkers who take pleasure in their unique insights that run against the grain, are eager for Truth and and authenticity and yet they all have unshakably solid sense of student integrity and personal responsibility. They do their homework, respect their teachers, their peers and their environment and they follow rules. They're not rebellious management issues. They see the point of rules and structure and yet they can observe and intuit so far beyond those social boundaries. These kinds of students are the students that I live and breath for. This is the kind of societal Gold that I hope to harvest and uplift.