Looking My Age

I've been asked a variety of questions from my students ever since I started teaching at this high school. They range from: "Miss, are you Japanese?" all the way to "Miss, are you married?" I generally greet these with good humour and I find the whole misunderstanding with both the staff and children as to whether or not I am my supervisor's wife/sister/daughter (he's Asian as well) extremely amusing. My supervisor usually replies with a "she's actually both my sister and my wife, we decided to keep things in the family".

It was only when I got asked this: "Miss, how many children do you have?" that I started to feel that I have already begun the rapid descent into old age. It's not so much the fact that they were curious as to whether or not I've already given birth to several mini-me's or not, it was the way the question was worded.

If you read carefully enough, you'll notice that this kid had already made the assumption that I have at least one child. I think I was so shocked at the time that I unwittingly allowed myself to be flabbergasted yet again when I replied, "how old do you think I am?!?", to which I got every number under the sun, from 19...to 40! Funnily enough, no one actually guessed my age correctly (although the ones who guessed 19 and 23 came pretty close).

So anyway, a compromise has been struck with this class: in the last 5 minutes of the last class I have with them, if they are able to ask me a question correctly in Japanese on their first go, I will answer that question for them, in Japanese. Now I'll probably have to promise the other classes the same thing if they get wind of this deal I have with this class or...perhaps the weekends have already washed the information out of their heads :p Ah well, either way I'm sure I can twist the circumstances to suit my own purposes, I mean, I said I would reply to their question in Japanese, I didn't say that I would provide a truthful and detailed answer; after all, saying "答えられません - I cannot answer this question" in Japanese, is replying to their question, isn't it? :p