This is the second in a three part series about one of the most infamous English students in the eastern Shizuoka area; The Thesaurus, who I honestly believe was trying to memorize the entire Oxford dictionary.

During a special topic lesson in the Voice room one evening, I think I accidentally stumbled across the reason for his love of vocabulary: I learned the origins of The Thesaurus.

I was teaching a two period interactive lesson about calling in sick. The first part of the lesson was to introduce words to describe common ailments. I taught the students about flu, headache, sprains, broken bones, and other common topics. When we got to problems with the digestive system, The Thesaurus jumped in with a personal story.

Years earlier, when he was just beginning to learn English, The Thesaurus was on his honeymoon in Niagara Falls. Like many travelers who were exposed to different food, he got the most common of all travel illnesses, diarrhea. He went to a drug store near his hotel and tried to get advice from the pharmacist on what medicine to buy. The Thesaurus didn’t know the exact name of his problem, so he did what every traveler has done: use a combination of small words and gestures to explain himself. The pharmacist misunderstood his pantomime and sold him a laxative instead.

Fortunately for The Thesaurus, he decided to pull out his English – Japanese dictionary before he left the store to confirm what he had purchased (I don’t know why he didn’t do this in the first place). He realized his mistake before making his problem much worse, and left the drug store with the correct medicine.

For the class, this was a valuable story that taught some new words and worked well with the theme of my lesson. For me, this was like getting a flashback style exposition in a superhero movie; I finally understood what started this mild mannered salaryman on his path to becoming a human Thesaurus, obsessed with learning every word that the English language had to offer. Suddenly everything made a lot more sense.

This experience didn’t stop The Thesaurus from being a challenging student, but it did make him more relatable. It also made me extra careful any time I needed to buy medicine in my second language! Remember kids: a dictionary is your friend at the drug store.