Yousef Alqamoussi explains YOUSEF ALQAMOUSSI

Hi, I’m Yousef Alqamoussi. And I’m here to explain “YOUSEF ALQAMOUSSI.”

Let me explain.

I, Yousef Alqamoussi, am a real person. I live in Dearborn, Michigan.

Well, actually, I live close to what is geographically Dearborn, Michigan, although not exactly within the jurisdiction of the geographic Dearborn, although that’s where I grew up. I live in a perfectly different geographic location called Dearborn Heights, but I am still very much in Dearborn, as they say.

So, I’m a real person. I have a Social Security number. I’m a citizen of the United States. I’m employed. I am certified by the state of Michigan to practice my license as a public school teacher at the Dearborn Public Schools in Dearborn.

I teach Language Arts at the Henry Ford Early College in Dearborn. That is, I teach at the college. But I am not a professor. I teach high school. I teach the high-schoolers on the college campus, but I teach them high school Language Arts. Tenth and eleventh grade. The Crucible. Animal Farm. Frederick Douglass. Gatsby. Loads of fun.

I am qualified to do this because I’ve earned two degrees from a local institute of higher learning called Wayne State University. There, I was trained in the Art of Language and received a Bachelor of Arts in the Instruction of English Literature and History. Then, I continued my training into the Science of Language and earned a Masters Degree in the Acquisition of English as a Second Language.

And so, I am a linguist. A language scientist.

Then, I do this other thing: I write. I started writing as a kid. I was only five. I was writing before I even knew how to write. I was writing so young that my mother had to actually scribe my stories by hand in her broken English handwriting and obscenely inaccurate spelling because I was not even in school yet and couldn’t put the words to paper myself. That’s how long I’ve been writing.

Sometimes I show people what I write. I take my words and put them on the computer, or possibly print them on ink and sell them as books. This is the best and worst part of my life. But I do it anyway. I do it because it scares the hell outta me.

I do have fun, as well. I like to read and watch movies. I go to the gym. I like to take walks. I have parents and siblings. Cousins overseas. I think I have some friends.

More importantly, I seem to have this incorruptible disease that forces me to say what’s on my mind. For instance, if I’m talking to somebody and that somebody says something stupid, then I am compelled by forces greater than myself to ensure that said individual is properly informed that a) something stupid was said; b) the stupid thing that was said was said by said individual; and c) said individual can proceed in one of a number of ways, such as by 1) acknowledging that they said something stupid by accident; 2) acknowledging that they said something stupid on purpose; 3) denying that something stupid was said; or 4) accepting that something stupid was said, but refusing to change course simply because they said it.

There are, of course, a number of other outcomes, possibly, but I will leave the rest to my reader’s most trusted speculation.

But as I was saying. For the most part, I say and write what I think. And I mean WHATEVER I think. And I think a lot. And a lot of what I think is stuff that everyone else is thinking but isn’t quite ready to say. But I am blissfully unaware of this, because I am under the impression that people are supposed to say what they think. And so, I do.

The consequences of this are tiresome. Oh well.

I still haven’t explained to you YOUSEF ALQAMOUSSI. But I really should, because that’s not Yousef Alqamoussi. No, it is a totally different thing.

But I’m out of time. This is Part One. I’ll tell you more about it in Part Two. Which I’ll share soon.