a realization

"Ms. P, yesterday I think I said the most mature thing I've ever said."

I nearly hold on to the side of my desk to anchor myself against the eye-rolling urge. Instead, I check my e-mail. "Oh, you did, did you? What was that?"

"No, really," he says, and the tone is sincere.

I turn, give my full attention. "All right," I'm game. "What did you say?"

He looks up to frame his story, starts to gesture. "I think it sounds better in Spanish," he stalls. "But Oscar and George and those guys, they were talking about quitting."

I sigh involuntarily, shake my head at the thought of Oscar, whom we both know is done for reasons good, bad, and indifferent.

"But you know I'm good with computers." I nod, save my smart remarks about smart pirates for later, or never.

"And I can speak English, and in Uruguay they pay you double for that. And I can write, too."

"You can, you write well when you put your mind to it. That's all true." Not that I know of South American salaries, but "bilingualism pays" is a tenet of the ESL faith.

"And really," he says, sounding somehow like a salesman warming up his pitch, "I learned English pretty good in only three years." What he really wants to say is, "So I know I'm smart, and I don't want to blow it," so I say it for him as part of my reply. Because he is. And he shouldn't. And I'll kill him if he does, though I don't think that he will, not him.

And then he gets to the part where he repeats back to me everything I told him in January, when he, in an immigration-induced funk, was so insistent he'd just work three jobs like his father, that what was good enough for the old-before-his-time man was good enough for him.

"I don't want to have to do that, so I'm not gonna quit school," he concludes, months later, all come to his senses. "And so that's what I told them, but it sounds better in Spanish."

"That's the thing about education, Maxi. It saves you from work: just look at me."