Kids say the darndest things

Today I was in science class with the 6th graders and the teacher had us watch a short video on the digital board at the front of the room. I was at the front of the class so naturally, when I turned around to look at the board, all the kids could see the back of my head. I had my hair up and I guess whoever was right behind me saw my hearing aid.

I started hearing whispers and murmuring coming from behind me. When the video was over and I turned back around I kept catching kids staring at me and then looking away when I made eye-contact. They all thought they were being sneaky but I knew exactly what was going on. Somehow, even though I've been there for a year and a half now, this was the first time that they had seen that I wore a hearing aid.

After about 5 or 10 minutes of this annoying behavior, I finally just took my hearing aid out and showed them. I think they were surprised that I knew they had been talking about me as they looked, wide-eyed, from the hearing aid, up to me, and then back down to the hearing aid.

"Eso qué eeee??" one of the students asked me. That's andalúz (what the people of Andalucía call their dialect of Spanish) for "eso qué es?", which means "what is that?" in English.

I knew they wouldn't know what a hearing aid was if I told them in English so I didn't reply immediately. They started throwing out guesses and random questions.

"Does it go in your ear?"

"What's it do?"

"Does it hurt?"

And then the best one..."Is that your translator?"

HAHAHAHAHA. I just about died. I guess they actually still think I don't understand Spanish. And evidently they severely overestimate technology if they think there's an apparatus you can put in your ear that automatically translates from one language to another. That'd be pretty darn incredible, and to be completely honest, I don't doubt that it might, at some point, come into existence. Kids are so funny!