Nichols and May and Parents in Syria to Interview

Today after they got back the incredibly difficult NorthStar reading test and took a test on the StoryCorps, I gave them back their writing and used some of the time for a workshop, helping them one to one and letting them share what they'd written.  Then, since we've talked about interviewing someone for StoryCorps and have read and listened to two mother-daughter pairs, I added some levity with the mother-son dialogue Nichols and May did back in the 1960s.  The students of 2014 thought they were funny too!  It's the one that begins like this:

Mother and Son

S:  Hello?

M:  Hello, Arthur?  This is your mother.  Do you remember me?

S:  Mom!  Hi!  I was just going to call you.  You know, I had my hand on the phone…

M:  Arthur, you were supposed to call me last Friday.

S:  I just didn’t have a second.

M:  You didn’t have a second?  Arthur, I sat by that phone all day Friday.  All day Friday night.  And all day Saturday.  And all day Sunday.  Your father said to me, “Phyllis, eat something.  You’ll faint.”  I said, “No, Harry.  No.  I don’t want my mouth to be full when my son calls me.”  You never called. 

S:  Mother, I was sending up Vanguard.  I didn’t have a second.

M:  Well, it’s always something, isn’t it.  You know, Arthur, I’m sure that all the other scientists there have mothers.  And I’m sure that they all find time after their breakfast or before their count off

S:  Down

M:  …to pick up a phone and call their mothers.

It was the dialogue my student from Nepal gave me between him and his mother that inspired me to dig this out.  

 Now I'm catching on the too much homework my students have given me with their one statement on who(m) they'd like to interview.  Here's what my Syrian student writes;

I would like to interview my  parents.  They still in Syria until now.  Even though I can see them on the Skype from time to time, it's too hard to connect to them.  I would like to know more about their life how is going, after the situation is getting bad.  I am woundering how they can get their daily requirments.  Specially most of jobs were stopped there.  I need to know how they are sleeping under the bomb sound.

I'd like to know too!