Flashing Lights: The New Bad Man Repellant

I’ve been a little lax on the posting lately. This is primarily because, while I’ve been keeping track of everything in the old fashioned paper and pen way, I’ve been too lazy to continue thinking once I get home. That and I’ve been a little cranky and pathetic recently, making my ability to complete projects even more crap than usual. Sniffle. I chalk this up to the exhaustion that comes with passing through my 34th I Hate Korea Phase. It will pass. Maybe.

A while back, my students began showing up at school with orange plastic doohickeys dangling from shoelace necklaces. They were too ugly to have caught on as a trendy Must Have, even for here, so I assumed that they must serve some sort of function. My suspicions arose further when I saw that if one of the students threatened to pull the cord that dangled from the bottom of the orange plastic blob, the others would cover their ears and grimace, as if something loud and terrible was about to occur. Clearly my new goal for the day was not to persuade my students from saying “change-y”, but to find out what the loud and terrible was.

Given that the students were reluctant to share the loud and terrible with one another, it was going to take a little effort on my part to get to the bottom of this. At least, that’s what I thought. Then I remembered that some of my students are 8, which usually makes being tricky a practice in futility. After the first few students merely giggled uncomfortably when I asked them what was with the orange doohickeys, one of my younger introductory level students decided that he would let me into the loop. He pretended to pull the cord, then waved his hands around and made a beeping noise. I asked why he needed this, and he proceeded to look embarrassed and giggled like the rest of the class. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that one of my students finally provided me with the why: “Teacher, there are bad men”.

Right. Of course! Half of my students had taken to wearing what were essentially rape whistles. The exact same model. I later learned that the hand waving my student had done during his demonstration was meant to indicate that there are red lights on the side which flash when the cord is pulled, presumably because Bad Men are known to be scared of flashing lights.

I feel much better for my student’s safety having learned this.