When I was a child, in China, I walked to school with my classmates. On the way to school, the boys used to catch cicadas. They found them in the trees and in the bamboo forest in the summer. To catch the cicadas, the boys used to put glue on the ends of bamboo sticks, and the cicadas would stick to the glue.

I remember that one day, a little boy caught a cicada when he was on his way to school. He put it into his pocket and continued to school. When school started, all the students were listening to the teacher, when suddenly the cicada crowed loudly. All the students laughed, but the teacher was very angry. She said, “Who has a cicada? Please throw it away!”

The class was quiet because they knew that the boy did not want to throw his cicada away. But the cicada kept crowing, so the teacher went up to the boy and demanded, “Give it to me!” The boy answered, “NO!” So the teacher grabbed the cicada and threw it out the window.

I can still hear that boy crying. That happened long ago, but I cannot forget that scene. It’s like it happened yesterday.

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A native of China, Jenny Jiang immigrated to the United States in 1990. She lives in Queens and enjoys her life here in New York. Jenny Jiang studies English on Saturday mornings at the Consortium for Worker Education’s Workers United Program. Her teacher is Jackie Bain, and the site supervisor is Sherry Kane.