My student Mark, who is in the 6th grade, was getting teased by a pair of girls about which one of them he liked. One of the girls, Julie, said something like, "Teacher, something is wrong. Mark likes both of us."
I think this wasn't actually true – I'm not sure he likes either of them. But the girl was teasing him by drawing me, the English teacher, into the conversation. And since it was in English, I felt compelled to join the conversation.
He was being good-natured about it, so I bantered with him a bit. Mark has a very self-confident, somewhat laconic personality. Eventually, I asked him, "Are you a Casanova?"
For whatever mysterious reason, most Koreans know the name "Casanova" – it's been borrowed into Korean slang to be used the way American teens might say "player," I think – a boy who has multiple girlfriends, either at once or serially.
Mark shrugged. "What's a Casanova?"
Julie laughed. "You don't know Casanova?" She seemed surprised. She leaned over, and whispered in his ear – presumably giving a Korean definition. When he understood, he visibly blushed. But he was quiet for a minute, as if considering the question seriously.
Finally, he said with a kind of calm aplomb, "Not yet."
He's good enough at English that I could be confident he knew what he was implying by saying it that way.
I laughed at that.
[daily log: my foot hurts]