“Miss Kinnian teeches me how to spel better. She says look at a werd and close your eyes and say it over and over again until you remember. I have lots of truble with ‘through’ that you say THREW and ‘enough’ and ‘tough’ that you dont say ENEW and TEW. You got to say ENUFF and TUFF. Thats how I use to rite it before I started to get smart. Im mixed up but Miss Kinnian says dont worry spelling is not suppose to make sence.”
- extracted from ‘Flowers for Algernon’, Daniel Keyes
#currentread #ootdmatchesbookcover #FREAK
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the boy was down with one of those 24-hr stomach flus on tuesday, at around 1 in the morning. it was to be his first MC from school.
at 6am he cried out, “but today i got spelling!”
yeah, that was my first thought too, ha ha.
*********
he did his spelling yesterday, all ten words in one go. and got them all correct. (feough. phew.)
next week’s spelling’s going to be tuffer tougher.
*********
a bit on ‘Flowers for Algernon’: it is a story of Charlie, a 32-yr-old with a low IQ, who undergoes an experimental brain surgery to artificially increase his intelligence. the result is a rapid rise to great intellectual heights. like a modern-day creation of Frankenstein’s, he begins to question his existence, and what makes up humanity since it soon becomes clear that intelligence alone does not fulfil the criteria.
a subset of the story is the far-reaching repercussions of childhood traumas on one’s psyche. one of the memories Charlie gains from his new-found clarity of mind is of constantly being pushed – and punished – by his mother when he was young, to accomplish tasks other kids his age had already mastered, to no avail, and even to detrimental effect. all the doctors told her to give up hope that he would ever become smart. she eventually sent him away to a facility for the mentally-challenged, for the sake of giving her younger daughter of normal intelligence – aptly named Norma – a normal childhood. for Charlie, these memories and events have remained fuzzy all his life, but when they finally emerge from his subconscious, there is pain, anger, grief and disillusionment in place of blissful ignorance.
the part where Charlie’s mother tried to teach him to read, and him trying so hard to please her yet only succeeding to make her even angrier, made me so, so sad.
i ended the book last night feeling wretched.
#greatread
*********
i gave the boy extra kisses in the morning. i know i’m sometimes hard on him.
they test my patience, each in different ways. but i am just grateful they are normal, average children.
*********
but seriously, i swear i don’t know what to do about my spelling-nazi-ness!
thankfully, we he survived his first week of spelling.
i was initially apprehensive when i saw his spelling list (twice a week, starting from the third week). they went straight into long vowels, double letter words, and past tense. how delightful.
i turned ‘a-n-i/m.a.l.s’ into a catchy rhyme. i bribed him with a kiss for every correct word. i barked “LONG VOWEL E, ‘E-A’!” probably a hundred times. i promised a scream at his sister every time he got the word ’screamed’ right. (hey don’t judge, it worked.) his daddy and oma too took turns to – shall i say it? – *drill* him. yes, the dreaded drilling has (sadly) begun….
gladly, his ejaan (once a week, phew) was slightly less stressful. i was more amused by the stickers than the fact that he got them all correct. the stickers say “Teruskan” and “Menakjubkan”. indeed.
atrocious handwriting aside, i think he did ok. we asked if he copied. he assured us he didn’t. because everyone did this: *demonstrates hunching over with arm covering book*.
they seem to fly through one milestone after another in a flurry, as if in a hurry to grow up and be less reliant on us…
was it not just yesterday that we reached that exciting milestone that is peeing in a potty?
no no, i’m not complaining, not at all. in fact, please, keep growing. i’d even petition for you to skip the whole dreaded business of teenagehood and go straight on to mature adulthood if i could. but i suppose that’s why milestones are necessary in the first place, to prepare them for that full bloom ahead…
++++++
and so, here he is, one of the 38,600 children this week to reach that exciting milestone that is P1.
as you can probably tell, he was VERY psyched to start his P1 life. being in a new environment and making new friends and having access to ‘big children’ – these things have always thrilled him. (what’s that? studying? meh, that’s just a distraction…)
at the school, we were quite impressed that there were hardly any display of first-day jitters or anxiety or nervousness or clinginess or tearfulness normally associated with first-days (i’m talking about the children AND parents here). we reckon that’s the upside of having already been to pre-school. another thing we observed, they were such a well-behaved, orderly bunch. (for now.) and oh-so-cute. (for now.)
the first thing he asked after he alighted from his school bus and met me by the canteen was: “can i buy something?” i think to him, primary school is a kind of ‘freedom’ – getting to hold on to his own money, having the autonomy to choose and decide for himself what to buy without mummy perpetually nagging or ordering him at his side. (instead, he had a P5 buddy to do that, ha ha. nahhh, he was very nice and all big-brotherly. we didn’t have to worry at all.)
“don’t worry,” assured one of the teachers to a bunch of parents peering from behind the barricade surrounding the canteen during recess time, all their eyes searching the blue sea of little uniforms for a glimpse of their kid.
“i’m not worried; i’m just CURIOUS,” i muttered, chuckling at how preposterous we parents must seem, waving at our kids like mad visitors at a zoo.
some, like me, got promptly IGNORED.
LOL.
oh well.
+++++
as soon as i got home, i smothered the girl with kisses and inhaled her heady sweet-sour scent all over her body. “i’ve got one more,” i rejoiced. maybe it’s a last child/only daughter thing, but i got sentimental imagining her first day of primary school in the future, in her oversized uniform and oversized school bag, coz obviously, she too will be as tiny as i was back then.
(like this tiny:)
yes, i’m afraid with the girl, i’d prefer the growing up to go juuuustt a teeny little bit slower. (although her streak of independence, while totally charming now, is quite a force to be reckoned with…!)
when i was briefing him after school on the timetable i drew up for this week, he actually negotiated/bargained with me to reduce his 4.00-5.30 slot by half an hour, and thereby increasing the 5.30-6.30pm slot by half an hour.
first day of school already so clever ah?
ok lah, since it’s your first week, i give you chance…
been tetchy the whole day, fretting over tomorrow’s Big Event that is The First Day Of P1. can’t help but feel… nervous. and cranky. and tetchy.
new bag packed with list of books, new shoes and socks set by the door, new uniform hanging on the door knob, allowance of two dollars (in small change) tucked in new money pouch.
the boy has to be in the school hall by 7.15am, and we have to be up by 5.30am because his school bus is scheduled to be at our block by – ugh – 6.10am.
i don’t know how i ever made it through school. what a horrible feeling. it’s like preparing to be sent to the gallows.
BUT THAT’S JUST ME.
the boy, well he is /quote/ SO very excited /unquote/.
we’re still undecided whether to send him to a student care centre nearby after school, or just keep him at home with a routine timetable (although this option runs the risk of driving his grandma up the wall in the afternoons).
guess we’ll have to work it out over the next few days..
on the way to the Page One warehouse sale, working up a frenzy at the prospect of “up to 90%” sale, declaring it as “like being in heaven”, and attempted to explain to the boy a consumerist’s concept of a 90% sale.
me: “let’s say a sweet is $1, 90% off means you only pay 10cts! and let’s say a book costs $10, 90% off means you only pay -*pause for quick mental calculation ha ha* – $1!”
A: *impressed* “that IS cheap.”
me: “so, now you know why I say it’s like being in heaven? since I like books so much?”
A: “no, but if you’re in heaven, you don’t need to buy the books – it’s all FREE.”
me: *damn* -_-
+++++++++
fine, scrap the heaven part – there’s an unbelievably long queue outside the warehouse and it’s hot as hell.
+++++++++
still in queue. a guy just walked past triumphantly clutching onto big plastic bags of books, proclaiming “HANG IN THERE PEOPLE! It’s worth it!”
looks like this was also someone else’s idea of heaven. heh.
we were messing about with the dry ice that came with their ice-cream, pretending to cast spells into a cauldron, and getting my mystical genres mixed up, i asked them to each come up with three wishes for an imaginary genie to grant.
aniq: “i wish for another abang adam! and i wish for another aidin! and i wish for another auni!”
(my sis-in-law and i both shook our heads in non-approval.)
adam: “i wish for thousands of millions of dollars…. (to be) a professional football player…”
(and i either forgot his last wish or he didn’t manage to come up with one – i tried to extract it from him the next day but he just shrugged. hmph, boys!)
the other evening, aidin (the little fella there who’s auni’s age) was being badgered by the other three kids for three pieces of mentos left in his hand. reluctant to dole them out, he counted them and muttered aloud, “MAMPOS i got no more.” !!! (their oma eventually dug up some sweets in her handbag, like all good grandmas do, so the boy was spared the tragedy of having to distribute his prized mentos.)
on sunday, we were all heading back after a wedding, and the kids were whining to go to their oma’s house to play some more. adam and aidin, of course, had to first seek their dad’s permission, which they REALLY don’t like doing. (their dad can be such a grinch, you know.) aidin, feeling the injustices of the world on his young shoulders, declared, “not faiiir!” and after a bit more of expressed disappointment, we called all four to come into our car to go to oma’s house. aidin, seizing uncle izad’s hand on the way to our car, looked up at him and plaintively uttered, “thank you for saving me all the time.” !!!
SO dramatic, our little ones.
(ps: all four got their wish of playing to their hearts’ content and had a sleepover at their oma’s that night. AND their mummies & daddies had a nice quiet evening catching up on movies in their respective homes heh heh. so… good job, superhero/genie/santa uncle izad!)
boy: “mummy, i want to tell you something. i like to hang out with you.”
me: “reaaally? why??”
boy: “ya lah, get to jalan-jalan, have fun…”
me: “even when i scold you so much?”
boy: “it’s ok, i don’t mind.”
me: !! “good. then i can scold you even more.”
boy: “some times i don’t mind…”
i’m not sure what brought about this line of conversation. we were walking around vivocity, me holding his hand tightly so he wouldn’t run off into the crowd. it’d been quite a day:
i’d brought them to the office in the morning. (they’ve been asking to come to work with me again ever since.)
i’d brought them on board a docked ship in the afternoon.
i’d bought them books from the floating book fair. (but no, NOT any more of those princess ones she’s holding, please!) then, more books from the lovely Page One bookstore. (which now I hear is GOING TO CLOSE DOWN WTH?!)
i’d brought them to watch the latest ‘Alvin & The Chipmunks’ movie, even though their high-pitched singing GRATED ON MY NERVES OMG.
i’d brought them to the playground and a dinner of disgusting fried fast food.
i guess, i like hanging out with them too.
(until the end of the day when THEY grate on my nerves and i’ve had enough of scolding them. )
===================================
i’m not sure if that conversation earlier had anything to do with me telling him the story of ‘Room’ (by emma.donoghue). his interest was piqued when he read the title on the cover and asked me what it was about. so i’d been telling him the story in bits and pieces as i progressed through the pages. i’d finally reached the conclusion of the book the night before, and he was in rapt attention as i told it to him in the car on the way to the office that day.
i could see how compelling the storyline would be to him: it’s written in the voice of a 5-year-old boy, who has never been outside of the room (or rather, the windowless garden shed) where he was born. his mother was abducted 7 years ago, and had been kept captive in the 11ft-by-11ft room by her kidnapper ever since. she was repeatedly raped, impregnated, then gave birth to the boy and raised him all by herself as best as she could under the dire circumstances. she never allowed her captor to touch, or even look at the boy, all his life.
you might think that being locked in a room your entire life, never knowing the outside world (or even believing or understanding that there is one), would be a truly horrific thing. but to the boy, the room was his world, and it was enough, because he had his mother. like a protective womb, the room for him was safe and secure, even as he lies in the wardrobe at night while the kidnapper makes his mother’s bed creak. she was everything to him – his playmate, his teacher, his friend, his nurturer (he’s still breastfed at 5, and there’s a brief touching part near the end when they’re out in the world and he bids goodbye to his mother’s breasts, a symbolic ‘weaning’ off his dependency on her). she invents games to keep him active, tells him stories, teaches him to read, uses recycled materials for crafts, establishes a routine and good habits.
i imagined living in a closed room with an active, curious child, with limited resources to keep him engaged all day, every day – i would DEFINITELY go mad in less than a week.
but then i read this – the real case of elisabeth.fritzl, locked and abused in the basement of her house by her own father FOR 24 YEARS, and gave birth to 7 children in that span of time. the eldest child was 19 by the time they were released. it’s a miracle she did not go mad.
the human will to survive is an amazing thing.
for the boy, perhaps the story of Room drove home the point to be thankful for his life, his possessions, his freedom, and opportunities.
and hopefully, for his mummy, who tries to provide him all those things, and more.
===================================
i am my mother’s only one,
it’s enough
i wear my garment so it shows,
now you know
only love is all maroon
gluey feathers on a flume
sky is womb, and she’s the moon
the kids’ centre had an xmas party, and i thought since it would be aniq’s final party there…
last chance to feed his friends in school with junk ha ha.
(for some reason i couldn’t find xmas stickers anywhere, so i slapped on some last-minute printed-out ones, though i don’t know why i obsessed over it in the first place, kids’ll just rip open the bag and only care for the contents. i had to resist the urge to add tinsel and glitter and tags. srsly.)
“Facebook.. it’s like, a place on the internet – you know, internet? on the computer? – you can tell people what you are doing, where you are, put up pictures to show your friends… Daddy has a Facebook. Aunty Nur has one too.”
“wah, Daddy also got? some more, who else? you got also?”
“i used to have one, but i closed it down.”
“why??”
hmm.
“because i didn’t like it, so i closed it down. why, you want a Facebook? but your friends must also be on it, then you can add them. your friends have or not?”
“have! i think they have! I want, I want also!” [i seriously doubt they do.]
“you sure? then you must know how to spell, you know. but who told you about Facebook? your teacher, is it?”
“nooo. i saw, you know, that one… the man, the *PRESIDENT*, that one, came to our school… then we take picture with him… i saw, he say ‘join me on Facebook’….”
“OHHH, that one not *PRESIDENT* lah! that’s our MP! Mr B/a/e/y! Hahahahahaaahahaha”
(well, at least we know he attempts to read what he sees in his surroundings.)
speaking of which, come, guess who else has a FB account?
our domestic helper.
!!!
she’d acquired a mobile in secret, we discovered it, and decided to give concession for use only on weekends. during one of her (naive/foolish?) over-enthusiastic ’sharing of information’ about other maids, she SHOWED mum their FB pages from her mobile, and also revealed how she found her old boyfriend’s Facebook, leaving him a message, etc.
!!!
i mean, i know FB has become so ubiquitous and universal, any literate person with net access can easily open up an account and start sharing, expressing, interacting, trolling. and it really shouldn’t surprise me that our domestic workers too have jumped on the social network bandwagon.
and yet, i still find it… kinda disturbing. my domestic employee, active on FB. sure, it’s somewhat an accepted norm now for any employee, especially those in an office, to access FB in the course of their work day. so how is it different for maids? how exactly does it cross the line? should i stop her, would it be hypocritical of me?
anyway, i’m letting it go. for now. i can’t justify why she shouldn’t have a social life, albeit a virtual one, while under my employment.
perhaps I should even warn her how social networks can be scarily addictive and detrimental to one’s health and well-being.
or maybe I should just tell it to aniq. and hopefully quell his curiosity all together. (and that’s another issue to ponder – young children on FB: yes/no? i bet you can guess my answer to that…)
the much-anticipated K2 graduation concert happened some time last week. it was a modest affair – parents didn’t have to pay for attending; it was held in the K2 classroom itself, which they converted into a mini-stage, with props, backdrop, banners all done by the dedicated and resourceful teachers at the centre…
they performed a play adapted from Kevin Henkes’ picture book (yeah!), ‘Chrysanthemum’. it was supposed to be a surprise for parents, but aniq of course, had to spill the beans, especially when he kept blurting out his lines at random times. i’m forever amazed at pre-schoolers who can recite lines to perfection and perform to an audience, because i myself have a case of stage-fright, i kid you not!
after a chinese version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, which had a malay boy as the emperor (yes, impressively reciting lines in mandarin!), the whole class went into a rendition of MJ’s ‘we are the world’. no, i did not sing along to it.
and then this part, which was indeed a surprise – each kid’s name was announced and they went up to their parents in the audience to hand them a vcd with an ‘i love you’ message… well, that sorta teared me up, a bit. :p
it also came with their graduation certs and photos, so beautifully packaged, SUCH a HUGE leap from our time, some almost-30 years ago.
the people he’ll miss next year…
and some work they did after their visit to a primary school earlier. the teachers discussed with the kids on what to expect in primary school, practical things like what to do in case they lose things or fall sick, etc. it sure makes it a lot easier for us parents, who are at this stage even more nervous for them than they themselves are.
dear firstborn, here’s to an exciting and memorable journey ahead…. (TO PSLE! HA HA HA HA HAA)
it’s sunday afternoon and i just had a second call from aniq’s friends from school, wanting to speak to him. first (at seven in the morning while I was still asleep!) was a boy; the recent one, a girl. (ie: batrisyah. ahem!) both times he was unavailable.
mummy’s new role: telephone operator. O_o
he’s already committed both parents’ mobile numbers to memory for some time (in case he gets lost, he can ask to borrow a stranger’s handphone, he says – although i bet if it were an iphone, he’d end up playing ‘angry birds’ than call either one of us).
and since his class’ graduation last week, he’s taken down a bunch of his friends’ numbers from school, including his teacher’s and laoshi’s. some of the numbers even have no names. very smart.
so what do six-year-olds talk about over the phone?
looks like mummy will have to start honing her phone-eavesdropping skill early….
“i’m so, SO excited!” he says, when i briefed him on his P1 orientation the night before.
he’d been here one other time with his K2 class, when the school had generously responded to his child care centre’s appeal for a visit some weeks back. each kid brought along $2 worth of change to experience making transactions at the school canteen (they were learning about money), and had students to ‘buddy’ them during the visit. i thought it was a nice gesture by the school management to welcome the K2 children and provide them with such a learning opportunity. i was told later, a teacher had asked for a show of hands as to who was coming to the school next year – only aniq had his hand up.
i suppose i should feel a little maternal stirring of emotions, i mean, this is an important milestone after all, the firstborn entering primary school, but… well, i look at him at the school hall, amongst the sea of tiny expectant faces, all confident, ready and raring to go, not the slightest bit perturbed by the new people or environment or things he has to adapt to, grinning and waving at us from afar, and… i don’t feel too concerned.
he’ll be just fine.
(of course, i shouldn’t speak too soon: first day of school, *i* might be the one in tears – for having to wake up SO EARLY and have him reach school by 7.15am!!)
i like love zebras. only because they’re black & white.
of course, auni has to like love unicorns. because, as she will tell you, with all the wisdom and solemnity of a 3.5-yr-old, “unicorns can MAGIC, you know.”
aniq likes likes rhinos. they have horns too, he says, but they’re REAL. i guess he’s more of a pragmatic, being all of almost-6-yrs-old.
(update on auni’s progress on spelling the word ‘zoo’: she no longer spells it as “o-z-z”. she has since been rehabilitated and now spells it as the socially-accepted “z-o-o”. i kinda liked it better as ozz, really…)
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