However, we did manage to talk of other things, including her trying to get me to take a train to Maryland to help her unpack. More sigh.
The Pie came up and I was telling her how we live a fairly quiet NY life, as compared to the frantic idea that most people have of New Yorkers. We don't have small children, two jobs, have to walk up several flights of stairs to get home. Only one of us has to be in rush-hour traffic and both my husband and child can come home to hot food most days of the week.
And the Pie is in a school he truly loves. That is so foreign to me. I hated school. Not just like everyone else. I truly hated the place. Elementary school holds no good memories to me. I went to 2: Aranguez Islamia and San Juan Presbyterian. All my older siblings went to AI and were very well-known, and my mother was adored there. I hated that school. I had a couple of friends, but most of the other kids didn't like me because I was bright.
SJP was no better. There, my father was revered. My absolute worst memory comes from that school and my sainted father is right in the middle of it.
I hated getting up in morning. I hated putting on that garbadine uniform. I hated walking up the steps to my classroom. I hated the feeling of wondering if I was going to get hit by the teacher, with a stick, a ruler, his hand or the back of a handbrush. My 5th Standard teacher instituted the tap: students were allowed to "tap up" (slap behind the head) of any other student who was standing to answer a question and made a mistake. One girl's mother was a teacher in the school and after her daughter got her first tap, her mother came to our teacher and told him that the child gets headaches and to not tap her anymore. The rest of us could go suck duck egg. I still remember the first and only time I ever got hit on the back of the head by the boy sitting next to me because I made a mistake reading from a science book. I wanted to close that big, thick textbook and slam him upside the face. I have no idea to this day how I managed to contain myself. I didn't blame the boy, who told me he was sorry afterwards. No one enjoyed doing that to the person standing up. It was a tiny way of sharing the licks, especially among the kids who were beaten more often than others. I just hope that teacher died a slow and painful death.
But.
I digress.
Pie just does not have this experience in school. Neither did Chris. Pie just has the best damn time in school. He does not know how lucky he is. He wouldn't have this experience in public school, or in any other private school for that matter. He does so much in a day and it never feels oppressive, the way my school work did. He's allowed to think for himself and express himself, not a wild way, but in a controlled, creative way that still gives him freedom.
I am so glad neither of my children had to go through what I did. Corporal punishment was against the law by the time Chris went to school, but I still made it very clear that I would not tolerate any teacher putting God out of her thoughts.
Ok. Back to Bom.
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