تفسیر درس

Black Sheep – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation Black Sheep. Now in the conversation, my two brothers were mentioned a little bit so I thought it might be interesting for you to learn a little bit more about my family while I was growing up.

So my mother was a high school English literature teacher so she didn’t teach English in the same way that I do. She taught English literature and she did that for her whole working life, her whole career, her whole working life.

Then my father was an artist and he had many different kinds of jobs. He was…he had art teaching jobs in high schools and colleges, as well as having his own businesses, some related to art and some not. My dad was what you could have…you could call a jack of all trades. So he did many different things but art was always his main focus and still is.

My parents then, they were…they’re still together, which is not very common here in the United States. In fact, they just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. So they had three children, my older brother and he was born in the state of Illinois which is in the middle part of the United States. And he is, he is about 3-1/2 years older than me.

And then I was born in the same state, Illinois, but about 2 weeks after I was born, my mom and dad and my older brother and I, we moved to the state of Michigan which is north of Illinois and it’s actually on the border with Canada, with the country Canada. So we lived there until I was 8. And my younger brother then was born. He was born in Michigan so he’s a little over a year younger than me.

So my parents only had three children, two boys and one girl. I was the middle child. I was the only girl and I was the middle child. So when, when I was 8 my family moved to the state of Georgia then, which is in the southeastern part of the state, and that’s where we lived until I went all the way through college.

So my family, my…I would describe them as being a middle-class family. And what middle-class means is we weren’t rich but we weren’t poor. We were somewhere in the middle. And I would say we were probably a very typical American family, or very usual American family.

Me and my two brothers were involved in a lot of activities throughout school, so my brothers played a lot of sports and I played some sports as well. I played softball and basketball and I also took dancing lessons. So we were involved in a lot of activities and we also grew up with a lot of pets. Pets are companion animals.

So we always had dogs and cats and some, when I was younger, well even actually in high school I had other pets. Like I had, when I was younger I had some hamsters. They’re little animals, they maybe could look like mice. And then when I was in high school I had a guinea pig, he was black. Guinea pigs, hard to describe them, but they’re in the same family, I think, as mice and rats, but they don’t have a tail and they squeak. They make a really high squeaking or whistling noise.

And I had a rabbit at one point. And I had an animal called a chinchilla. So a chinchilla is an animal that has really soft fur or hair, like a rabbit, and it has rabbit ears and then the tail looks like a squirrel. It looks like that of a squirrel. It was a really sweet animal. And then in college I had some fish. I had another guinea pig and another rabbit, and of course cats. So I’ve had a lot of animals growing up, always a lot of animals around me which is probably why I love animals.

My older brother and I both went to college, or university. And then a few years later after I finished college with my bachelor’s degree, my four-year undergraduate degree, I went on then to get my master’s degree which was two more years of school. And I got my master’s to teach English as a second or foreign language.

I would say it was difficult at times growing up with two brothers, me being the only girl, because we would fight a lot, as brothers and sisters do. But we would actually get into physical fights, and me being a girl against boys, sometimes them together against me or maybe just one on one, it wasn’t always very pleasant because they were usually stronger than me. So that was kind of difficult at times. It could be very frustrating.

My mother’s parents, so my grandparents, were alive most of my life, up through college. And my grandfather died several years after college but my grandmother then just died in the last five years, so it’s been very recent.

And my dad’s parents, my other set of grandparents, I actually never knew because they died before I was born. In fact, they died before my dad married my mom so she never even met them. So that always felt like something was missing, not growing up having two sets of grandparents like a lot of kids do.

My parents now are retired from their jobs so they no longer work and they still live in Georgia. My older brother, he lives in Georgia also and he has a son who’s 14 years old and he, my older brother is no longer married. They, he and his wife got divorced so they ended their marriage. But she also still lives in Georgia, as does my nephew, my older brother’s son.

And my younger brother, he also lives in Georgia and he has a 2-year-old daughter and he is not married but he does live with his girlfriend who is the mother of his 2-year-old daughter, and they all three live in Georgia as well.

And then me, I’m here in San Francisco, California, so I’m all the way across the country on the western part of the United States. They’re in the southeastern part. It’s about a five-hour plane ride to, well, it’s a five-hour plane ride then plus about, oh, a little over an hour drive then to get to where my parents live. So I see them usually once a year. Sometimes it’s been twice a year but usually it’s just once a year.

And I live here with, in San Francisco, with Joe and AJ and his wife, Tomoe, sometimes live here and sometimes in Japan. And Joe and I don’t have any children and don’t plan to have any children. So that’s a little bit about me growing up and obviously now. And, y’know, a little bit about me, a little bit about my family, but it might be somewhat interesting to you. It’s like I said, I think I grew up in a pretty typical or usual American family.

Now going back to black sheep, I’m wondering if black sheep is something that is…is a common idea or if it has any meaning, obviously it wouldn’t be the word black sheep, but if there’s something in your country that is just, y’know, just like black sheep. If you have those in your family, share with us on the Ning site. We’d love to hear about it.

Alright, that’s all for this commentary for the conversation Black Sheep and I’ll see you next month. Bye.