A Day In the Life of a Writer, i.e. ESL Tutor

I am a writer. Which means that I am a freelance ESL tutor, a film and TV “background artist” (much classier than “extra”, non?), an underpaid office temp, a panhandler and, every once in a while, a writer. Put it this way: if I lived on my writing income alone, I could afford to live in the alley behind the Ralph’s supermarket in my very own cardboard box, dine on spoiled lettuce and bruised apples, and splurge, now and again, on a fresh muffin from Starbucks.

Oh ho, calm down, I’m just exaggerating. That’s what we writers do. But the truth is I do enjoy a variety of jobs to pay the bills, some of which are quite fun and some of which make me want to take up residence in said cardboard box. I thought I’d share some of my worker bee experiences with you, so that you could feel better about your own pay-the-bills job….

I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to a sweet, senior-aged Korean couple who knew about six English words. I went to their home four days a week to impart my grammatical and pronunciational (yes, that’s a made-up word) (and no I didn’t teach them made-up words) wisdom on them.

It was working out great until the second week when the husband decided that I should move in with them and teach them English twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The next lesson I gave was on all the ways to say no: no thank you, no thanks, no way José, uh-uh, not on your life, are you kidding me, do not ask me anymore, etc.. 

 English for Beginners with Perini Scleroso

I’m pretty sure he and his wife thought there was something wrong with me for choosing to be a single woman and live alone. I think they thought they were doing me a favor with the offer—sparing me the embarrassment from my peers or neighbors or something.

He also would incorporate new words into compliments for me, such as “English teacher very beautiful”, “What size t-shirt teacher wear?” (he wanted to bring me back a gift from Hawaii where they were going on vacation), “Teacher have boyfriend?” and, when I answered yes to that one, “Teacher like to kiss boyfriend?”

I could put up with all this, no sweat, but when, one day, he waited until his wife had left the room and then turned to me and said, “Wife crazy. I want divorce. You help me.” I knew it was time to end this gig.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow: Selena as an intergalactic slave…