Correcting Papers

Today, while correcting some students' writing exercises, I stumbled across a few amusing stories. Here, without further ado, I present them for your reading enjoyment...Oh wait...There's a little bit more "ado"...First, you have got to read the pre-written exercise the students did as practice for their stories so you can get an insider's point of reference for my anecdote.

"I went to Okinawa by plane during Spring Vacation. It was my second trip to Okinawa. I saw a beautiful sea. I took a lot of pictures there. I enjoyed my trip very much." (The students translated these sentences from Japanese to English)

Generally, the students don't even give the slightest effort to break from the mold of the exercise.

"I went to (place) during (season) vacation. It was my (ordinal number [1st, 2nd, etc]) trip to (place). I saw a beautiful (noun). I took a lot of pictures there. I enjoyed my trip very much."

Standard response: mundane, unimaginative, boring. But...every once in a while...I stumble across a diamond...beautifully shining from the rough...a siren coaxing me toward the jagged rocks of laughter...a kappa* waiting to grab me, pull me into a river, drown me and suck my life out through my anus. Wait a sec. That last one doesn't really work. Oh well. Anyway, take this one for example. Although it's pretty standard with little variation from the translation exercise, a single letter that never should have been, was. This lone, unassuming letter transforms the story from one hardly worth a second glance to one, quite literally, worth writing home about.

"I went to Hollywood by plain spring vacation. It was my first trip to Hollywood. I saw a movie. It was nice. I ate poopcorn there. I enjoyed my trip very much."

Now, although I'm sure you think of me as one of the most mature individuals you know *cough* *cough*, I can always get a laugh out of the word poop...especially if someone is accidentally writing about eating it. Ahhhh ha ha ha ha...Oh...having the mind of an immature 13 year old. Can life get more grand? Then, there's always the lovestruck middle schooler.

"I went to Yuming's house. It was my first trip to Yuming's house. I saw beautiful Yuming. (hand drawn pictures of hearts). I played the piano with Yuming!"

Oh Yuming! *SWOON* So dreamy! Finally, here's one that's radtacular** because of the student's creativity...it's my personal favorite from this particular writing exercise in fact. Grammar/spelling: not so good...Creativity: awesome!

"I went to heven last nigh. die of cold. I saw my grandfather. I took about heven. then go back to hospital."
finish

The "finish", written in red ink across two lines while the rest was written in pencil only added to my enjoyment of the story. I think you can grab the gist of it, but I'll still translate it to what I believe he meant to write.

"I went to heaven last night. I died of a cold. [In heaven] I saw my grandfather. I looked around heaven. Then I went back to the hospital."
The End

Actually, reading over the original and my translation, the original is way better. Anyway, it's stuff like this that makes makes me sit back sometimes and think, "Man I love this job".

*A kappa is a semi anthropomorphic mythological Japanese beast residing in rivers and other sources of water which has a protective shell like a turtle...wait a sec. Hmmmm...new description. A kappa is a Japanese monster that lives in the water and pretty much looks like a skinny ninja turtle with an old-timey Catholic monk-like bald spot on the top of their head (where water was stored to allow them to go on land) and a beak. Kappa were used to explain the appearance of bodies found drowned (sometimes when someone drowns and their body becomes bloated, their intestines begin to seep out of their anus, so the kappa's feeding pattern [sucking a person's life out through their anus] would help explain this phenomenon). Also, children were taught that if they ever came in contact with one on land, they should bow. The kappa, although a monster that drowns people and eats them, is very polite, so when bowed to, it must do the same. When a kappa bows, it spills the water on its head, making it necessary for it to get back into the water to stay alive. Therefore, kappa were useful monsters to parents who would use them to scare their children away from potentially dangerous sources of water and to scare good manners into them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kappa_(folklore)

*For those of you who don't know/didn't figure it out, radtacular is rad and spectacular combined. It's something I use so I don't have to waste extra effort on speaking additional syllables and/or typing extra letters (although, typing this explanation has thrown the "typing extra letters" reasoning right out the window [and typing this realization that the "typing extra letters" reasoning is negating my reasoning for using the word radtacular to an even greater extent]). To sum up: This explanation is radtacular!