I’m drowning in a sea of ideological discomfort, people.
Our university purchased a batch of old and stale chalk that keeps breaking whenever you try to write. I use the chalkboard a lot in my language courses, and it annoys me that the chalk keeps breaking and interrupting the flow of my class.
And what normally happens when people are frustrated? Right you are, they interject. Since this is a Spanish class, I interject in Spanish. And today my students decided to censor me.
“What did you just say when the chalk broke?” they asked.
“I said ‘Ay, Dios mio!’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means ‘Oh my God’.”
In response, I heard a small lecture about taking God’s name in vain.
It takes a real lot for students to make me angry. They can come in late, fail to show up for the exam, forget to hand in the homework, text in class, but I remain calm and cheerful. But when people try to sanitize my speech, I get livid. It isn’t even like I used any sort of X-rated vocabulary. And if I had done that, nobody has the right to censor me either.
Why do people have to be so stuck up and censorious?

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