31
January
2007
*Still working on the translations with Julia, still writing for the SUPER SECRET project. I have a few good stories from work that just beg to be written but they’ll have to wait a little more.*
Let me introduce what I’ll say here by admitting that I’m a bad singer. I’ve kinda known it from the 4th grade, when my teacher was looking for good voices for the class chorus, and everybody had to sing a portion from a song. I got to the end of the first line when she gasped and said “Ok, Ada, that’ll be enough.”
A good ten years after that I’ve heard my voice on tape and I had to admit she was right. While I sense the rhythm and can detect a false note sung by somebody else from ten kilometers, I utterly and completely suck at reproducing correctly the simplest tune. As I never intended to become the next Maria Callas (or Britney Spears, for that matter), it didn’t bother me much. Until now.
Here we were today, Timi and me, the li’l chipmunk nested comfortably in my arms while I was browsing the ‘net. She just had a language development spurt, her pronunciation becoming a lot clearer than a few days ago. So we’re naming everything to her until exhaustion, point to whatever we’re looking at in our magazines (she now knows precisely how an Athlon Brisbane CPU should look like, and can tell the mascara from the lip gloss ) and listen to kiddie song mp3s until they autoplay (on repeat, thank you very much) in our brains at random times. You haven’t lived until you’ve hummed “If I’d be a cat, I’d catch 100 mice” at 7 AM, I tell ya.
Anyway, back to me and Timi. The Mese Ovi (Kindergarten Tales) are playing, and a particularly catchy tune about a few freezing geese starts. Since I was feeling all cheery and full of joy, I bursted into song. My kid looked at me, sang for a short while along with yours truly and then … and then ..
… and then she looked at me again, with an expression reserved for when she’ll be much older and angsty and I totally won’t understand anything of what’s happening to her …
… and with a martyr’s resigned sigh, she put her little palm on my mouth, efficiently silencing me.
Posted: chestii
19
January
2007
Remember my apprentice, Julia? She stopped being my apprentice for a while now, but we stayed good friends and continued to meet often. She teaches Timi Romanian for free to thank for her apprenticeship and until recently I didn’t had any means of thanking the thanking.
It happens that for her diploma she needs 7-8 horrifyingly long and ugly psychology articles translated, and it also happens that she’s overwhelmed by their difficulty. So she came to me for help, and me knowing (ahem) some English, and being accustomed to horrendous terms like “ANOVA”, “expressive suppression” and “gender-based bias” and their respective counterparts in Romanian, was glad to accept, no money involved of course.
So in the last week, instead of blogging, working on the SUPER-SECRET project I can’t tell you anything about (yet), snugging with the husband, playing with Timi or making some meals that involved more than defreezing the meat and the veggies and throwing them in the oven, we spent every common spare minute of our time on those bloody messes. We translated at work, translated in silence so deep her cell’s ringing scared the living soul out of us, translated with Timi running around screaming her cover of Jingle Bells as loud as she could, translated at 11:30 pm and at 10 pm. We translated on workdays and translated in weekends. And we still have two thirds of the abominations to go.
When we’re too tired, we interrupt for a quick round of chitchat, completed with lots of exasperation sighs and giggles. After all, she’s a primary teacher to a class of gypsy 4th graders. I’m a clinical psychologist in a huge Romanian county hospital. We always have new stories to tell, and most of them are either very saddening or very funny.
So today she told me how they went to the puppet show. She started teaching those kids in September last year, and when she met them, they were the problem class of the school - noisy, obnoxious and aggressive. The other teachers also didn’t had a problem with that, since they fitted the stereotypical profile of the gypsy kid in the Romanian subconscious. But Julia didn’t believe they weren’t able to change and she’s no gypsy hater. So by being firm, setting clear boundaries and rules and reinforcing them and arm-wrestling into submission the most aggressive kid in the bunch (and earning the class’s unconditional admiration by doing so), she has now one of the most disciplined and assertive classes in that school. Not to mention that the kids love her (just like I predicted they will, back in September 
).
…anyway, back to the puppet show. Her kids were briefed into what to expect and how to behave, went to the bathroom and ate their lunches before going, so they wouldn’t feel hungry or need to pee, and watched the show like a flock of content little angels. The other 4th graders were wrecking havoc in the meantime - running between the seats, throwing snacks at each other and generally not paying much attention to what was happening on the stage.
So J got angry for the fact that her kids couldn’t enjoy the show, even though they wanted to . And since the other teachers couldn’t care less, she switched to medieval mode and went straight to the two most obnoxious kids from the theater, engaged in a food fight.
Kid 1:
J: What do you think you’re doing?
Kid1: Ummm … eating my sandwich?
J: Does this look to you like a cafeteria?
Kid1: … No?
J:Then start paying less attention to the sandwich and more to the show, okay?
Kid 2:
(reaches down, sits back, reaches down, sits back, all while wearing a large smirk on his face)
J:Feeling smart today, hmm?
Kid2: Huh?
J:About the food.You have.On the floor.That you think I didn’t notice.
Kid2:Err ..sorry. I didn’t mean to.
J: You didn’t mean to reach down repeatedly to take another bite? Kid.Please.
Kid2: Uh-oh…
So after the rest of the teachers half-assedly take example and silence their kids, a little hand raises and two large teary eyes look into Julia’s. It’s a kid from another class, that was seated near the two troublemakers.
J:Yes, little one?
Kid3 (almost crying): Miss … can I please have one sip of water?
She had to bite her lip not to burst into laughter, before allowing the kid to drink. In the end, what matters is that those who were more into watching the puppets instead of getting chips entangled in their hair finally had a ball. A fair deal, if you ask me.
Posted: chestii
15
January
2007
Welcome to the new home. Akismet is activated, the comments are working .. sure feels good to be here
Posted: chestii
8
January
2007
Therefore, I give up. Comments are open again, no registration required.
Posted: chestii
8
January
2007
Today’s entry credits its inspiration to RSM’s post about bullies.
It’s not an American thing, that’s for sure. In high school, I was average in terms of popularity - not the queen of the prom, but not the outcast either. I gravitated mostly outside the class’s social system, with a few good friends and a few girls that didn’t like me much. However, there was this girl called Sanda who for some reason one day decided I was a good target. Mind you, I wasn’t the only one - she picked on about one third of the class on various occasions. For me, to be the receiver of constant, unprovoked hostility was a new sensation though.
It started with the glasses - I have a good eye and one with a fairly mild myopia, so I need to wear them only when I read or work on the computer. I wore them during classes and sometimes I heard a quick “four-eyes!” whisper from her bench. I brushed it off as too insignificant to matter but something deep in the mind’s basement started ticking.
Then were the puns about my name. Out of the blue, she wouldn’t use my given name, and call me only by the family name. Which is a nice name, except that she sometimes changed its ending, twisting it into a semi-obscenity. I never answered to it, so she either called me a few more times and then gave up, or started snickering with her clique. I minded my business, but the ticking got a little louder.
And one day, a few weeks after she struck a friendship with the twins I had as benchmates (we were seated 3 / bench) she came near me and commanded me to get out so she can sit down. And the clock started ringing on a near-deafening level in my mind.
My family, friends and most of my patients know me as a woman with a sweet, child-like voice.The simulating patients and some of my exes, however, know another, entirely different tone. One full of cold, annihilating, I-can-kill-with-my-soundwaves anger. I think I discovered that I had it right at that very moment.
I stood up, facing her.
“No”
“No what?” laughed she.
“I’m not getting out of this bench”
“What’s the matter with you? I have to talk to them .. get out”
“You see clearly that I’m writing here. Why should I get out of the fucking bench? I’m fed up with the countless four-eyes and the snickering. I’m not your friend so I don’t have to please you. And by the way ..the name’s Ada. You’re not that dumb to remember only my family name. Use it in the future if you want me to answer you.”
… and I went back to writing.
The twins went out of the bench at Mach 3 and rushed her away from there. The look in her eyes was worth a million bucks - sort of an incredulous fright. She spent the rest of the high school keeping a respectful distance, never again trying to pick on me.
I wish I’ll be able to tell Timi this memory in a way that she’ll believe me when she’ll be picked on. To be able to convince her that yes, all the crappy teen magazines are right, and if you show that you’re not afraid, and that you’ve had enough, the bullies get scared and run. After all, I’ve been there, done that and got the four eyes to prove it .
Posted: chestii
2
January
2007
I mean … I’m sure those images on the kiddie champagne and on the toffees are perfectly innocent, right? RIGHT?
Posted: stumbled upon
