The Faint Trick part two

Today, during break, I was talking to a collegue about setting boundaries in class and classroom management. 'I have experienced that,' he told me, 'first of all, it is not important that they enjoy the subject. Maths can be pretty boring and I tell them that I agree. They just have to learn and practice it. Whether they like it or not. Second, you have to make your lesson as fun as possible, stressing 'as possible'. Classroom management is a very subjective term. It all depends on what you find managed, manageable and totally way out of hand.'

'So what do you find totally way out of hand?' I asked. 'Well, last year at my other school, a kid said that she wanted to leave the room. She climbed out of the window, slided down the rain pipe, went to the bathroom or something like that and then got back in the class. That was a bit out of hand I'd say'. 'So how did you respond?', I asked. 'Nothing, I had no idea what to say, I still don't know what would be the right reaction. My collegues who saw her sliding down weren't too hard on me, fortunately.'

He continued. 'But for example, last week a girl wanted to show that if you hop up and down a few times and then blow on your fist, you faint. I thought, heck even though they've got a test tomorrow, why not try it out? So she did right it in front of the class.' 'So did she faint?' I asked.  'O yes, she fainted and after that they all continued their work dilligently. And guess what, the class got really high marks for their test, who knows it may have helped?'

The Faint Trick

Do you know that if you kneel quickly up and down about ten times and then blow really hard on your wrist, you faint? I discovered this when I was about 14 years old and on a summer camp. My friends and I would faint, recover and faint again, just for fun. I guess it was not dangerous or that it has caused any long-term damage.

Anyway, today in class one boy told a few friends that if he breaths in and out too deep, it makes him feel really dizzy. The girl sitting next to him said that he should do that if he didn’t feel like doing PE or wanted to go home early.

I always need to tell a cooler story (thinking about it, this might be a faint trick derived slight brain damage!). So in the spur of the moment, I told the class about my fainting adventures and how I had once used it to skip school. Of course, the kids thought that was pretty amazing and asked me to do it right on the spot. And that’s when I realized I probably should not have told them.

On my way back home I started pondering. What if tomorrow these kids try out the faint trick at school, or perhaps at home? What if it is a really dangerous thing to do or what if one of them hits the head when he or she falls? What if they tell their parents about the teacher of English who used to skip school when she was their age? What if they tell the other teachers? What if they tell their friends and they all decide to faint at the same time?

By the time I got home I was envisioning the school full of unconscious kids and me being fired on the spot. I was about to call the director and confess my sin, when household chores, an infected little finger, a guy who was about to give the guineapigs a haircut, homework and cooking distracted me. Fortunately. Because maybe nothing will happen and then it’s probably better to not say anything at all. People tend to remember these kind of things.

But again I am reminded of how careful I have to be with what I tell the kids in class. Stories can be taken completely out of context and haunt me the rest of the year, or worse, the rest of my career!

I want to be open and show who I am so that the kids will know that I’m actually also a person with whom they can feel at ease and learn from. On the other hand I need to keep a professional distance so that they will respect me and know that I’m their teacher and their boss and they should darn well listen to me, work their butts off and do as I say!

It’s a fine line...

Out of the Oblivion

Although Angola is one of Africa’s oiliest countries, when we lived in Luanda getting petrol used to be a hazardous affair! First of all, there was always the chance of getting diesel mixed with sea water. Second, dodgy guys could be waiting around the corner ready to rob you. And then one morning we were woken up by a big bang. A petrol station very close to our home had exploded!

One Saturday morning our Suzuki's tank was empty so I drove down to the bomba. Something strange was going on. Normally you would have to wait in line for about 10 minutes, this day the line already started 2 streets down the road. At the petrol station people were shouting at each other and making a big fuss. I soon found out why. Overnight, the price of petrol had risen by a 1000 percent! From one day to the other, without notice, the government decided that the price of petrol had to be market conform and changed it. Just like that.

Everybody was affected by it. Public taxis charged more, local vendors charged more and the prices of bread and water rose horribly. We expected a revolution, or at least some sort of protest. But nothing happened. When I asked around, people would tell me how their lives had gotten more difficult, but nobody would even grumble about their government. 

I couldn’t figure out whether they were afraid to protest or just didn’t realize how unfair they were being treated. It wasn't the first time that I was confronted with their total unblissfull oblivion.

About 12 years later I’m pretty shocked to learn about the way our Western countries, banks and insurance companies have been led in the past decade. Our leaders have been able to break down regulative institutions and set up systems and that have hollowed out our economies. Now, lots of people are faced with financial problems, our governments face immense deficits and are cutting back on everything I hold dear.

Have we all been blissfully oblivious? For years nobody objected, let alone protested. We trusted our leaders too much and enjoyed buying houses and spending money way too much. 

I’m glad that there are protests and ways to step out of our unhealthy financial system. I'm glad the Arab people have been able to make a stand against their dictatorial systems, even though the future of the entire Middle East is still pretty grim. At least they have had the courage to claim their rights and freedom.

But I worry about countries like Angola. I worry about some of their finest people like Teresa and Allemao and wonder how they are doing. There have been a few small protests that were all violently nipped in the bud. Will these people ever have the strength to step up, or perhaps just as important, the support and attention from the West, to do so?

Grow

‘I’m sure that by the time I’m 10, I will look like I’m 9’. We’re sitting on her bed and I’m untangling her hair, which is a hell of a daily ordeal. Even though I’ve been waiting for this remark for quite a long time now, it still comes as a surprise. ‘Why?’ Because I’m too small and last year, when I was 5, somebody told me that I was too small to be in Kindergarten, even though I was old enough, so the same thing will probably happen when I’m 10.’

All of our kids have eaten the same, been cuddled the same and have had the same amount of stress and happiness. Yet three out of the fabulous four are way too small for their age. For years I would have all sorts of excuses for it. It must be the tropical parasites, the fact that they’re twins, all the moving, not enough vitamin D, whatever. 

Now we’re seeing an endocrinologist. She concluded that it’s not the nurture, but definitely nature. She’s found out that one of the twins is not producing enough growth hormones. She's started up the procedures for hormone therapy. The other kids are still within the margins and not eligible for treatment. So one is going to grow, the other ones at a much slower rate. 

The doctor doubted the effectiveness of therapy for them since they do produce a little bit more hormones. But I’m thinking that maybe the insurance company just won’t approve of the treatment, since it’s so expensive and being small isn’t really a disease.

She called it an ethical dilemma to treat just one and asked if we still wanted to go ahead with it. I think it’s out of the question to not let one have treatment when it's obviously needed. I could never decide against such a thing, just because she will not look exactly like her twin sister anymore. She’s an individual who should take every opportunity to grow if she can’t do it on her own. 

So I told her that she will grow. Spared the details of all the injections and the fact that some pigs will help out and share their hormones. One day she will be tall. I braided her golden locks and tucked her in. When I left the room she had a big smile on her face.

But when I kissed the others goodnight, my heart was aching.

Fingertip Stories

About a year ago Michelle lost her fingertip. Somehow her bedroom door slammed so hard that it completely chopped it off. As you can imagine there was a lot of blood and screaming involved and I also freaked out a bit. I can still recollect the image of the frayed little finger and feel slightly sick.

We raced to the hospital. Just before we left, I realized the tip was still somewhere in the room. I ran upstairs and looked. There it was, between the bed and the radiator. I picked it up, put it in a plastic bag, took it to the hospital and handed it over to the nurse at the ER.

According to the nurse I should have put the tip in cooled water, or kept it in my mouth. Now she wasn’t quite sure if the tip would grow back on or die off. I could understand the idea of the cool water but I was thinking, what if I had put the tip in my mouth and accidently swallowed it? Then I would have gone through the rest of my life as the mother who ate her child's fingertip. Imagine!

 

In any case, an as-good-looking-as-they-come plastic surgeon skillfully sewed the tip back on and Michelle’s finger is just fine. 

Not long ago I heard the fingertip story of Frans, a guy who helped us out with the renovation of our house. Frans grew up in Rockanje, a village on the North Sea Coast. During WWII Brits, Americans, Germans, and whoever felt like it fought a lot on the beaches, leaving tons of dangerous boys toys behind. Because his parents couldn’t afford to give Frans pocket money, he would scour the beaches for grenades and other munition and sell them to his adventurous friends. He was quite the entrepreneurial guy! 

But one day, something went wrong. Frans’ dad was working upstairs when all of a sudden he heard a big bang. When after that Frans yelled upstairs ‘I’m off’, he knew that there was trouble. He walked downstairs and entered the living room. The walls were covered in blood. He followed the blood traces outside all the way down to the doctor’s office where he found his son, black and red from powder smoke and blood. The doctor had just put a bandage around his finger. ‘Try to find the tip’, he said. ‘Maybe the it can be sewed back on’. They looked and looked everywhere, but couldn’t find it!

Fortunately Frans's wounds healed, although one finger is a lot shorter than the others. Because of all the blood stains, the living room had to be redone completely, wallpaper renewed and the curtains cleaned. It wasn’t until his dad took a painting of the Alps off the wall that they found the fingertip back. The force of the explosion got it glued on on the painting, exactly on the top of a mountain, nobody had noticed!

Fingertips end up in weird places!

No Escape

It’s almost next door, huge, has an enormous offer of different, high-quality products and friendly staff. But I hate my supermarket. There are so many moral choices to be made!

Is it too pricey, too environmental unfriendly, too not-biologically, too animal-unfriendly, too child-labourly, too not-fair-tradey, too untasty, too unhealthy, too pre-or-conservatery or too unnecessary? It takes ages to get all my stuff!

I long back to the days where the carrots that you bought came from the farmer next door and the pig that you ate had been fed by grandma. Blissfully oblivious of all the wrongs you were doing simply because you were alive. But how different today! Even when you’re dead it’s impossible to be considered innocent! Coffins are made out of wood, being buried takes up a lot of natural resources and cremation produces CO2. Oh jeah. 

Somehow all this stuff becomes painfully clear when I’m in the supermarket. I can’t really do anything about it. The more I know, the more responsibility I have when it comes to my actions and decisions. It’s a heavy load. 

But the little mouths must be fed. I have to continue shopping, guilt tripping along.

Bedtime

Playing with Legos is a bit addictive. I’m not good at creating my own models, but I just love to spend hours looking for pieces in our Lego Kilimanjaro and construct complicated things out of the little booklets. 

The Legos are in Aaron’s room and even though he was already in bed, I was still sitting there Legoing. These quiet moments when it’s just me and him are the best, talking about school, friends, football and growing up. I asked him if there’s something he’s really scared of. 'That he would loose me in a big crowd, or that I would die all of a sudden,' he said.

‘Funny, I have exactly the same fears, I’m afraid to loose you in a big crowd and the most horrible thing would be if you would die. Just thinking about it already makes me cry,' I said. 'Hmm', Aaron replied. ‘So let’s be happy that we’re alive and in big crowds hold each other’s hands tight.’

It was quiet for a while and I continued my impossible search for a piece of Darth Vadar’s ship. Aaron said: ‘You really have to stop playing with the Legos now and give me a hug mom, we need to sleep.’

He’s such a smart kid.

Power

Free paragnostic advice. Send me a letter with your date of birth, colour of eyes and gender and I will give you advice on your matters of life. 

A collegue of mine, teacher of math, put out this ad on a free market website just for fun and three months later still found himself writing letters to complete strangers every evening. A gazillion people had responded to his offer!

He wrote back three types of letters, To the people with blue eyes the advice to live healthier and get more rest, the ones with brown eyes the advice to reconcile with a person they were in conflict with and the other coloured the advice to meditate on the beauties of life and enjoy simple things a bit more.

Then the trouble started. All of his letters had been right on the spot! Men and women of completely different backgrounds shared their trials and tribulations and how his letter had put them back on track. The teacher of maths turned out to be a master of paragnostic insight! 

What amazed him most was that everbody trusted him so much, never asked any questions about his professional background and most of all, how his words out of the blue could have such an impact!

Why is it that people rather take advice from a complete stranger, the stars, fortune tellers, prophets, divinities, whatever, than from for example, their parents? Why is inner conviction or self motivation not enough? Is it that deep down everybody wants to be recognized and taken care of, or kicked in the butt by something or somebody completely out of their own realities? 

So next time I want my children to do what I tell them and take my advice, I’m going to get it done in a supernatural way. 

Any domestic prophets out there?

Machos, muscles and garbage alley

Today, I cleared out the garage. It had been full of mess ever since we moved in. All the stuff was molding away or broken, so I dumped it in the car and drove down to garbage alley. It is a place where you can leave all your touchable troubles behind, like the dead dryer, the broken beds, two wooden stretchers, the little strollers without wheels, the rotten car battery and the car seat that was half eaten and then poohed on by rats, who as I found out today, also happen to live in the garage!

I parked the car in front of the designated containers and started unloading. It was a lot and heavy. Like a whole lot and very heavy! Next to the containers were all these big guys wearing yellow jackets. ‘Well, at least I don’t have to do this on my own’, I assumed. I'll tell you why.

A woman is spoilt rotten for life, once she's lived in the Dominican Republic. I remember that in one month for some strange reason, I had four flat tires in a row. Every time I stood on the side of the road ready to jack up the car, a muscled Dominican macho would hurry over, grab the screw jack and help me out. It could get pretty annoying, especially since I had become quite skillfull at changing tires myself. Some of these guys didn’t have a clue what they were doing but refused to let me do it. They were too proud to admit it, and even prouder to not let a woman down! Things got even better when I was pregnant. In all those months I don’t think I ever carried a single bag from the store to home, was always offered a seat and was able to use designated parking spots for pregnant women. It was lovely, I felt like a queen.

But what a difference at garbage alley today! I had been throwing chunks of wood and furniture left-overs in the container and was about to get the dryer out, when one of the guys in the yellow jackets walked up to me. Believe it or not, while I was pulling the dryer out of the car, he simply told me to throw the garden furniture in an other container and gave me a little reminder that electrical appliances go in the closed container. And while I stumbled off carrying the at least 30 kilo machine, he just turned around and walked off. Never asked if he could help, I don't think it even crossed his mind!

Actually, I wasn’t too upset about it. You see, Dutch men may have bad manners and not be as macho as a lady would like, but that’s ok. It keeps us women indepent and strong. So I just carried the thing by myself, threw everything away by myself and was feeling pretty cool, all by myself.

On the other hand...

Slugs and such

Slugs and such

As I mentioned before, we have a bit of a soppy garden. Plants grow like crazy and so did the Hosta plants. Hostas are not very exciting plants, but their flowers are pretty pretty. There are a few downsides though, which I won’t elaborate on, but two are worth mentioning. I’ll start with the first. They get boring after blooming but still take a lot of space. So I decided to take them out and plant some very interesting carniverous plants, ferns and a weird type of grass instead.

And this leads us to the second downside. Slugs love Hostas. I am sure that all the neighbourhood slugs had immigrated to our garden by the time I pulled the plants out. 

Whether it was out of near starvation, or fear of the carniverous plants I don’t know, but now it seems that the slugs have fled to inside places, looking for food and shelter. Because after that dreadful day, we’ve had a few surprising encounters!

One morning I wanted to put the cutlery in the dishwasher and this is what I found:

Last week, my nephew poured chocolate sprinkles from the carton box on his sandwich. When he was about to take a bite, a slug fell on his plate. The slimy creature had gotten trapped in chocolate paradise.

Yesterday, a slug was sliding on Michelle’s little doggy, her lovey and best companion.

What can I say about it, does it have a specific meaning, in a way that broken glass brings luck? I googled slugs and symbolism and it's not good. In ancient days they used to be symbols for the devil. So never mind :-)

Could we use them for culinary purposes, since they seem to like being in our kitchen anyway? Well, I watched Bear in Ultimate Survival catch a few. He cooked them for at least half an hour, because according to him they can carry horrible bacteria and nasty stuff. When he ate the slugs he had almost the same look on his face as the time when he chewed on raw goat testicles. So we’d better skip that as well!

It’s not winter yet, but it's been pretty cold these days. I'm left to hope that the slugs will all move to warmer places outside our home or find eternal peace in slug heaven. Because I sure don’t want them in my kitchen anymore!