Hello, I'm Johnny Cash

I've been teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) at our church for several years now, and yesterday was the annual "graduation." In keeping with tradition, Cole woke up with a fever, so he had to go with me and sit quietly while I ran our final class and then handed out certificates at the ceremony. He did NOT pull off the stunt from four years ago, which I could have sworn I wrote about at the time, but I can't seem to find the post. He had just turned two, I think, and he woke up with a fever, so I couldn't take him into the nursery. He sat with me through a VERY LONG ceremony - at the time, I was teaching the highest level of English, so our class was called up close to the end. I threw him on my hip and walked up to the podium. As I gathered myself for a moment before attempting to pronounce names from at least five different countries, Cole leaned forward into the attentive silence, grabbed the microphone with his fat little hand, and said in his deepest toddler voice, "Hello. I'm Johnny Cash." The 300+ students sat there in confused silence, while all the older male church members who volunteer with me burst out laughing. It was magnificent. Yesterday, I was photographed half a dozen times by the most grateful group of people you can imagine. And my Cole and Caroline were photographed around a hundred times, their likenesses beamed off to relatives in dozens of foreign countries by students young and old with iPhones. I believe they were kissed and squeezed twice as many times. Pictured above is one of my best students, Xiang Ping, a retired engineer from China. I adore her, as do my children. I start every class with an open discussion of each person's weekend, what they did, what's going on in their lives, etc. Xiang Ping always reads from her notebook the most poetic descriptions of her weekends with her family and granddaughter. She has explored every inch of the DC metro area, and I always make a note of some wonderful new place she's discovered. I sat with her son-in-law at the annual international dinner - as we scarfed down incredible food from all over the world, he said, "I bet my mother-in-law is your best student." I said, "How did you know?" He said, "She's very driven and competitive." Maybe there's something to this Tiger Mother business . . .