My Lucky Life

By now I have divulged a few of my idiosyncrasies. So far you know:

•  I always put my trolley in the designated trolley bay
• I would never throw litter from my car
• I won’t complain about a meal from a restaurant
• I have a fondness for bodily functions
• I would possibly engage in a girl-on-girl snog

 As you can probably tell I am a wuss, conformist and anal retentive to boot. I do have a few more quirks. Isn’t that an innocuous sounding word? It suggests a habit that is slightly off-centre but still somewhat cute and charming. ‘Weird shit’ isn’t so delightful sounding.

 I am a teacher, and by the nature of the beast – teachers are confident and love the sound of their own voice. This hasn’t always been true for me. Family and friends of say……greater than 5 years know I have some odd hang-ups for a supposedly confident and educated woman. For example, only in the last couple of years have I been able to:

• Order take-away over the phone.
• Go through a drive through. This was a progressive thing – at first I could only go through if I was by myself in the car. I can now do it with passengers.

I still won’t:

• Order a taxi over the phone.

Don’t like to but have to cos it’s my job:

• Speak to strangers on the phone – calling parents, making appointments etc. If I have the choice to call or do in person, I’d much rather make the effort in person.

I was 21 before I could:

• Talk to an adult/figure of authority without blushing, mumbling, dropping whatever I was holding, tripping or choking on my own spit.

I was 12/13 before I could:

• Pay for stuff at the checkout – I had to get my lil sis to do it for me.

 However, I have no problem handling a class of 30 hormonal teenagers. Who knows what psychological web has been weaved in my little brain to know why I can do some things that are terrifying to grown men, yet I can’t do things that wouldn’t perturb a precocious 7 year old.

 Some of the things I can now, as a reflective person, trace back to childhood experiences, none particularly awful but obviously leaving an indelible mark on my psyche.

In myself, who I consider a fairly stable and functioning human (We can confer with Nursey Chick – she gets to see both ends of the spectrum!) I can see how fragile the mind can be. Yet seeing some of the students at my school I am amazed at the resilience of the mind. We have kids who are refugees from war torn African nations. Some have seen their whole family killed in front of them. They are polite, friendly and hardworking and I feel so proud of them, so in awe. Not only are they managing the best way they can, they are doing it in a country where they are just learning the language, going to classes everyday (some of them have never been to school) where they have to try and read, write and learn all this stuff that is alien to them. Seeing them, seemingly so happy is a joy. It also makes me want to smack the sullen,sulky teens that also frequent the school, whose biggest problem is not being allowed to listen to their I-Pod in class.

It makes me realise how lucky I am, weird shit and all. I might even go and call a taxi!