A Rubber Hand, A Blue Heart

It was my second year at junior high. It was early March. It was yet too early for the spring. It was chilly and windy outside. There were big rumors spreading among all the students in my grade about our Korean Language teacher. "Our Korean teacher has a rubber hand and a blue heart. She is as cold as ice and she can freeze us to death." The rumors seemed to fly high and to bounce back as big at every moment. Then finally, her class began. Because I was not tall, I was always in the first row of the class. I was so afraid to look at the teacher. My eyes were stuck to "the hand" and I let my thoughts run wild to imagining what it might be like. I was so close to the teacher that I felt I could just reach out and touch that hand if I dared. I remember we were all very quiet in her class. In those days not many students had been exposed to teachers with disabilities, so we didn't know what to do. Days passed and the fear seemed to fade out slowly. One day I finally looked up and saw a beautiful teacher. Her pale skin made her seem cold but I saw it as a sign of intelligence. Clear eyes, a sharp nose, and the other things that shaped her features began to strike me in a different way. She often seemed like a foreigner--someone who had known and experienced other ways of living; someone who might have much to teach us. Months passed, summer was just about to begin. My curiosity about that hand continued to tug at me and I found myself almost hoping that with the warmer weather, she might wear short sleeves. Then an episode occurred which changed my entire perspective. I should begin by saying that she rarely laughed until this particular morning. Her class was scheduled in the second period of the day, beginning around 10 o'clock. Right after the first class I couldn't bear my hunger so I opened my lunchbox. Three other students joined me and the odor of our food began to fill the class. The classroom was soon saturated with the pungent smell of Kimchi, the famous Korean pickled cabbage dish. When our teacher stepped back into the class, I saw several different expressions cross her face. Then, everyone started to laugh. She was laughing with the students. She said she could sympathize with our hunger, but we were all there to learn about social rules, and while she wasn't angry, it was important that we see that there were consequences to our behavior. Still smiling, she insisted that we had to take responsibility for our actions and for not having the patience to wait for the lunch time. So she had us stand in back of the classroom with our empty lunchboxes on top of the heads. We looked so silly that we could hardly keep from laughing, and our teacher was working to control her smile too, but we understood we were doing something that we needed to do and that the purpose was for us to learn to control our public behavior. Whenever I think back to this incident I still find it very funny and I'll never forget the teacher's appropriate feedback. No one ever again misbehaved in her class. She taught me how to change relationships. She taught me the true meaning of responsibility in a way I could understand as a middle school student. She taught me that correction doesn't automatically imply rejection. Most important, on that day I finally overcame my fear of people with disabilities and opened my eyes to the reality under her rubber hand. If I have any regret after all this time, it's that she might not have ever know how much I appreciated her.

-Kyongsook Choi