love aaj kal

As my friends, parents, professors, and especially boyfriends know, I am obsessed with love. I love the concept of love, the idea of it, the feel and action of it. Senior year in college I did an honors thesis called "1,372 for Love," a collection of love poetry I wrote, and I've spent countless hours reading and thinking about the language we use to talk about love. Needless to say I'm aware the English language has some pretty strange ways to talk about love.

So I was understandably amused when I found myself in front of a class of 14 year old boys, trying to get them to create a narration for a story called "The Romance" in spoken English class. The activity, called the story jigsaw, involved them looking at three different stick figure drawings, narrating the drawings, and then putting them in order. The first drawing was of a stick figure girl and a stick figure boy with a heart over his head.

The question was, "Why does the boy have a heart over his head?"

"Because he is loves the girl!" someone answered.

"Yes, but the correct way to say this is "he loves the girl, or even 'he is in love with the girl.'"

They looked at me like I was crazy. I sighed. Then I wrote "fall in love" on the board.

"Who knows the word 'fall?'" I asked. No one knew, so I acted it out. "In English we say 'I fall in love.'" I pretended to fall again, then pointed at the ground. "The love is there on the ground, and I FALL into it," I said emphatically, falling into an imaginary pit of mushy feelings, hormones, and heartbreak. All the boys laughed. I felt ridiculous, but not because the boys were laughing.

I felt stupid because the phrase is so stupid! What kind of stupid language am I teaching, anyway??

The final question I asked the class was "Why does the girl not love the boy" (the final stick figure drawing is of a girl running away from a boy while yelling "NO!"). A very bright student raised his hand.

"Because the boy is not handsome!"

I laughed really loud. "Very good!"

If only it were that simple...