Biola, a few years back I decided to 'refresh' some of my learning and the first class I signed up for at our local community college was English 101.
I lucked out by getting a professor that really loved his job. Being an evening class, my fellow students were a mixture of many ages and backgrounds.
Many of the students were quiet, having little to say and very few questions to ask during class even though our prof. encouraged us to speak up and take part.
Knowing me, at least a little bit, I'm sure you know I can't keep my mouth shut for any great length of time, so I not only asked questions, I voiced my take on his responses.
Eventually it dawned on me that I was almost the only one beside the prof. taking during class. So I stopped by his office a while before class one evening as asked him if I should shut-up.
"Oh no. I like that you speak up. Keep it up and maybe the rest of the class will start talking too," he said.
And it worked. We soon had some very lively discussions going in class that made the time fly by and, I think it helped the learning also.
But what I started out to say was that we had one student in class from South Africa. He always sat at near the door and even when others began to ask questions and speak up, he remained quiet.
Until one day someone used a local slang term to say something and it seemed he just had to ask "What does that mean?"
That question opened a flood gate and he joined in more after that.
I loved hearing him speak; there was an almost musical feel to not only his words, but the way he spoke them.
He told us he had been here for several months and had learned most of his English from watching TV. Which told me he was very intelligent to be able to speak English as well as he did, considering some of the bad grammar contained in the programs on our TV.
All that to say, I would love to hear you read this poem also - Shoot, I would love to hear you speak, no matter what you were saying.
My stomach would be sweet to meet you.
