Some of my favorite student names

All the Temple pics and bluffside buddhas here are shot from my balcony. The kids I think I will shoot from a nearby treeline or perhaps a moving scooter.

Yeah, that's my school, yeah, that's my apartment, no that's not my creepy cool van.

Ok, it may not be that sweet to lampoon helpless kids, but my kids lampoon me relentlessly and I don't even know it on account of my sketchy Thai. But in my mind ( a dark, smelly place crammed full of rationalization mechanisms) i believe an insult unheard is one that has not happened. Insult is a function of the receiver, not the sender. Take, for example, one evening in Chiang Mai, sitting at dinner, a table of Thai men (looking sort of Muy Thai, quite capable, and probably very kicky) were drinking whiskey and obviously talking about me. Soon, they abandoned all pretense and were hooting things at me in Thai. Well, I am not really the paranoid sort or a conspiracy theorist, so I figured they were just having fun with a farang, no big deal. They probably know swear words in English, so if I stick to something obscure, I could totally leave em in the dust. So I said back at one of em "Maybe when you're done being a complete tool, you can squeeze my Johnson." They were frozen for a sec in the headlights of rapid-fire English, and then they laughed uproariously, even coming over to slap me on the back. I ended up saying several things to them that were complicated and totally out of line, and they worked themselves into a sweat trying to decipher. Two days later, I saw one at the same place, and he bought me a beverage (which I didn't down... Thai whiskey and alcoholics don't mix, at least for very long) and he yells at me " I squeeze you, Mr. Johnson!" So they figured my name was Johnson, and they knew 'squeeze' is a verb. Interesting.

Anyway, on to helpless children..... The names border on the absurd here. I thought Beer and Pie were funny when I met them in Chicago, but dig these:

Titiporn, Smoke, Soup, Kornporn, Lick, James Bond, Strike (actually kinda cool), Head, Tease (a girl, of course), Boob, Tits, (there's also a radio station in Chiang Mai called T.I.T.S), Tit, Cock (in his parent's defense, they own a cockfighting training facility, and his handle was meant to be heroic), Oops, Where, and Fag. More later, when I start to work at the Kindergarten.

I actually love the one name system, because, as a teacher, I have to work with their real names, such as Attyathanattaphon Chanrathannataporn. Fit that into a field at the DMV, I dare ya.