Growing UP — Chapter 2
By now my paper folding friend is excited to meet me after the vacations. I see him loaded with a carton and a big bag on the first day and lethargic as ever, having no clue on what was he carrying and whom it was for. The closer he came the heavier the pile of recreational & engaging holiday homework (for parents) seem to look. The house that he made with litres of glue and dozens of cardboard made him (or his father?) explore his inner architect for sure, little did they think of recognizing my trip to grandpa and observing his village house being re-constructed, because they want the architect to have a real (fake) building of cardboard than actual participation in one.
On exploring his carton more, he shows me a big chart paper with stickers of all the domestic animals and their labelled body parts, which for sure might make him remember all of them, but reminded me of the tag games I used to play at the under-constructed house with the goats in the neighbourhood park and the ball that Bruno picked up from the corners on the terrace, I wonder how ineffective it was as a learning experience when the goat once got hurt and I was the one to give her the first aid and observe the camel, at the other end, of how he has a hump on the back; but this chart he had was sure a better a way to learn and (not) experience.
I foresee my able-friend to be presented as an ideal peer to me, through this environ(mentalist) woman as she enters the four-walled structure.
Unfortunately the woman is replaced as she takes her pet to the vet, by a (not so) gentleman, who is a firm believer of typing on the machine and take a print, but just a little difference, where he imagines everyone sitting on my side of the furniture as those machines and asks us to take out the bunch of papers collated by two card-boards, the sleeping bed of the capital and small alphabets replaced with boxes for these symbols on the currency note in my pocket. As I look at the number of tiles on the floor and imagine how many big toys from the jail garden can fit in here, the color of the tile suddenly changes to grey when I move my neck from his shiny shoes to his chin and his hand pointing to some scribbling on the glossy white small wall, he asks me to go to the board and solve the question, by the time I reach, the white small wall had my shadow on it, I had found which all big toys could fit in that tile. Apparently, see-saw and slide were not the answers to the question on the board, but the punishment helped me to find a new friend, sitting beside her I realize she is still confused on how 43 -25 can be a see-saw and a slide. I give her a smile and write 18, which made her look impressed but I wonder why she reacts like this when I write my new roll number on the apologetic note to be given to the owner of the pet which was at the vet.
The door opened slightly as my new friend came back with a filled water bottle and sat beside me, as I saw the water from the neck of the bottle flow into a short but wide cup, the door opens, (not slightly) as she enters with a prescription of the vet in one of her hands and a glass in the other, I wonder whether my new impressed friend should try to exchange her cup with the woman in front of us.
She looks at the carton and takes out the house and starts describing and appreciating the colours and how good (his parents are) he is at D-I-Y, when she looks at our raised hands and lets me speak, my detail of the dimensions and the garden and the plastic pets makes no sense to her even when my carton is also placed there, not visible to the naked human eye.
I walk slowly outside the classroom, standing there I look at my shiny shoes and the tiles turning grey, I recall how the bench that I left had a photo of a pet on one of the books, which said: “get well soon”. The innocent teachers were (not) born this old. The woman was once impressed with the gentleman standing outside of the classroom when they were kids.
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- Italicized content: highly sarcastic
