Teaching Dutch People English
Lesson 1: Stairs
Stairs are steps that frequently lead you upstairs, or "up the stairs," to a place where you're trying to go.
Where are you trying to go? If you're trying to go "up, you can pretty much bet that you're going to go up some stairs. And the stairs will have a staircase.
What's a staircase? A staircase is just a formal word for a group of stairs, complete with a bannister. A bannister is the hand railing that leads you up the stairs, or staircase. People clutch the bannister or guide themselves up the stairs with the aid of the bannister, especially if they're very old. Do you know many old people? Do they have money? Can you help yourself to some of it, or is it hidden somewhere? Where's their money?
Now let's talk about the places you can go, when you walk up some stairs.
You can go up to your bedroom, to cry. Is crying permitted in your house? Or is it frowned upon? Check with your parents, because some parents don't like it when you cry. So sometimes you have to cry in secret. Your bedroom is a secret place, unless it's been bugged by devices that spy on you. Is that plant hiding a microphone? Or is that a microphone that you installed there so that the plant can talk to you? Cry only when you have to: save up your tears, to drink, if you're very thirsty and there's no telling when you'll drink water next.
You can also go up to your office, if you're old enough to work in an office building that doesn't have an elevator. An elevator is a square room with numbered buttons indicating the floors of a building that moves vertically up and down an elevator shaft. The shaft is a frightening place to be if you're not in an elevator. People have been killed there. Not anyone you know, that's for sure. Other people, though. People who could have been good friends of yours.
Are you sure that the older people in your life aren't hiding money away in a place you could easily get to?
Those are things to think about. Next lesson: Old People, and what they could possibly mean to you in terms of money.
