Seems the summer’s middle-class must-have accessory is a Spanish teenager. My neighbours have one; everyone at the school gate has one; I choose not to.
One can’t help but pity these poor youngsters. They arrive from a country rich in culture and activity to be dumped in this rural town, a faux-urban environment having the necessary quantity of homes and pubs but lacking any real facilities. One has to wonder what stories they are able to take back home with them at the end of their summer of adventure!
I would not want to be contributing to such a bleak visit as they can expect from this town and whilst I do care that I should seem to fit in, I worry more about becoming a cliché.
It’s a difficult balancing act, but I manage it well for the most part. I am mostly able to make myself different enough from the rest to set me apart, whilst still seeming I belong in this type of neighbourhood.
That is not the only reason I opt out of this particular ritual.
I am reminded of experiences as a youngster when my friends had exchange students and quite honestly I have enough worries with my own girls and certainly don’t need those stresses with someone else’s!
I remember one year especially when my friend and myself were ditched by her student in favour of a visit to the park toilets with three boys. The friend’s father had been furious when we returned without this poor innocent soul, yelling something about being stranded, alone and frightened.
Umm… no, definitely not what she was feeling right now!
Nevertheless, he set about the streets to find her – and when he did he went mad at the boys concerned, shaming them at taking advantage of someone who did not even speak a word of English; which she did of course, faultlessly, just not around adults.
In fact, it was at this time I learnt a very important life lesson:
If it ever looks as though you are really in the shit, play the victim!
She cried and clung to the father, sobbing out her story in broken English about how she had turned to see us running off and was so scared at being alone she just sat and cried; how these guys had come along with the promise of assistance and had persuaded her to do things she had never done before.
And he bought it; every last word.
To the point where my friend was grounded for the rest of the student’s stay and a neighbour’s child was to chaperone instead – I was not allowed to the friend’s house again.
And even when the student was discovered at 2am a few days later having sex with another boy in the front porch, that was strangely also our fault, having corrupted her at the beginning of her visit.
It wouldn’t have upset us so much were it not for the fact that she had already had more sex during this one stay than my friend and I had combined in our entire lives and although the names of the boys concerned escapes me now, I do remember that at least one of them was someone I had a desperate crush on.
So before you ask: No, I do not have a student staying with me. Nor will I. Ever!
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