Some people may make you experience all the possible feelings in the world towards their attitudes. You can easily go from pity and sadness to exasperation and anger. More or less this is what happens to me whenever I see one of my teachers.
He seems to be a good person, but you never know if he mumbles because it is his way of speaking or because he is too depressed to speak with an open mouth as when you are willing to say something and be understood.
The first class we had with him, I believe that the general sentiment was a sadish one. I remember being at the end of school, on an inhospitable area of the building, looking at him, then looking at my classmates' faces, and then looking at him again, wondering how is it possible that not knowing this man, we were listening to his own stories about depression and surmenage, oddly mixtured with old movies and war anecdotes!
One of the classes, we stayed silent and out of the blue, he covered his face with both hands and started shaking his head while saying: "What am I doing nooow?". We stayed puzzled. Even when I knew it wasn't the correct answer, I said: "Nodding?". Still with his covered face he replied: "Nooo, what am I dooooing?". No one responded. Then he explained: "What happens when you put some bananas, milk and sugar on the blender, cover the top and put the blender on?...You will have a milk..." "SHAKE!" we added. "Yes, that's it!" He enthusiastically agreed. Of course we were waiting for something else to complete the idea of why is it that he wanted us such answer, but no, that was his only aim...to "teach" us the expression "shake your head".
Anyway, we haven't had many classes so far, because he seems to have a very fragile health and a very busy life, and so far, in terms of contents, his subject is like a monitored break. Since he seems to be accustomed to talk only to one or two students sitting in front of him, the rest of the class can easily do whatever they want from other subjects. Last Friday we had our first exam, and the questions were suspiciously simple. I say "suspiciously" because I don't know him, and I cannot infer what is the type of answer that he might consider correct. I hope my test was successfully completed. By the way, since it was really cold, my hands were stiff, and as if this wasn't difficult enough, he started talking to me and telling me how much he suffers low temperatures, because he cannot get a heater. Of course, the talk was long, and I just nodded respectfully because I didn't want to be rude and say: "Hello! I'm trying to write here!"
I really don't know what are we going to do up to the end of this term, but what I can say for sure is that this man, by choice or by fate, is alone, and at times his loneliness seems to be his heaviest burden, sometimes more unbearable than a migraine. In fact, he walked almost a block chatting with a classmate and me, until he told us: "OK girls, I have to go the other side, so...see you next week, have a nice weekend, bye!"
Monday, June 04, 2007
What am I doing noooow?
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