character sketch of a samwich

i have a particularly funny student in one of my elementary school classes. i believe homeboy is in the 5th grade. the majority of my students keep their korean names, which i've grown accustomed to, while some of the more brazen of of the bunch boast english names (including such gems as "diva"--a mousy girl whose palpable lack of self-confidence totally underscores such a moniker. perhaps the bolstering of her self-esteem was the precise impetus for her name choice...).

anyhoo, this particular dude's name is sam. he's a funny looking kid--bug eyes. bad bowl haircut. teeth too big for his mouth. encumbered by very large ears (i'll dwell on these "protuberances" later). he initially didn't take too kindly to my renaming him "samwich." mostly because now i don't even have to say it, but all the other children in class are happy to chime in (same with peter, a.k.a. peter panty, another oft-taunted munchkin. he threatened to change his name. idle threats, apparently. i guess wee elementary folk know no other kind of threats...).

so one day i decided it was time to give samwich a new name. he was promoted to samburger. which quickly escalated to samgyupseol (korean bacon). so now i've given samburger's peers 3 options from which to choose when they decide to tease him. i suppose that's what makes me a good teacher.

but back to those "protuberances" (such a good word it deserves to be typed twice). samwich is obsessed with his ears, and by association, so is the rest of the class. they're already big, like the oversized, highly unrealistic wings of a child's caricature-esque butterfly sketch. but their sheer size is not where the mystery lies. these are some stretchy ears. he's constantly pulling the lobes away from his jawline, only to let them flop back into place like over-worked rubber bands.

in a 50 minute class, samburger's hands are on/in his ears for a good 40 of those minutes. the best is when he takes his mechanical pencil (a korean wouldn't dare disgrace himself with a regular number 2 pencil. a korean child's pencil case and all its accoutrements is/are a whole nother beast of a blog. for serious...) and winds it up in his ear. he'll repeat this motion, unawares that class has stopped and we're all just staring at him, mostly at the dreamy expression on his face as his ears do what they do best.

to compound his bizarre habit, he also has his own catchphrase, originating from...somewhere yet to be decided. at any point in class he will burst out of his ear fumbling reverie to shout "oh my baby doll!"

uh, yeah. so that's sam. one of my faves.