ESOL Picnic

My mother teaches ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) at a local high school in my hometown. The ESOL department had its annual picnic on Thursday, and I agreed to help her out in managing it. I got to meet all of my mother's students and eat great food from many different countries, so it was an excellent time. I enjoyed myself thoroughly!
Of course, I wouldn't be true to myself if my brain wasn't constantly analyzing everything. I saw several things, but I want to point out the most significant:

I noticed that the students were very touchy feely with each other, and it seemed harmless at first glance. But as I looked more closely, I noticed that (unsurprisingly) the physical contact was always instigated by boys and not always appreciated by girls. This observation started to really bother me, for reasons that should be obvious. I was bothered enough that I intervened once (I tried giving some friendly advice about women), although all it earned me was a few tossed off homophobic remarks... I think I managed to annoy the boy, though, so that was a plus.

But by no means was that it. I noticed that a few of the girls decided they didn't feel like being objects for the teenage boys' sexual pleasure and weren't shy about showing it. They pushed the guys away, smacked them, and even elbowed them. They let loose whenever they needed to.

Now, I am of two minds about this. On the one hand, I hate that such action is necessary. On the other, I'm glad it was happening. Not gonna lie, it made me giggle several times to see the boys' cringes of pain... especially after repeated attempts to engage in sexual harassment. Later, I told my mom about it and how happy it made me. She said, "I taught them that! I told them that they don't have to do what boys want, and if the boys try to take advantage they can tell them no. I taught them to use force to say no if necessary. Especially the elbows... They're sharp."

I love my mother.

EDIT: I noticed that the writing in this entry was worse than usual. I wrote it quickly and felt bad about it afterwards. So I fixed it. It has now been refurbished to comply with my meticulously maintained standard of mediocrity. I do hope you can stand to rest your eyeballs upon it now.