Konrad Gniazdowski 29.09.2023

Dear Diary,

Yesterday, I realised that Amanda was no longer the child I thought she was. I really regret that I hurt her feelings to learn that.

It all started with a conversation about school. She lost points on her History test after she hadn't circledcircled [circle]circled her answers but highlightedhighlighted [highlight]highlighted them instead. The teacher is really strictstrictstrict, and if he doesn’t just instructinstructinstruct the students to simply choosechoosechoose an answer but, for example, wants them to cross it outcross it out [cross out]cross it out, he doesn’t award pointsaward points [award point]award points for the whole exercise when his instructions are not followed precisely. It’s a silly thing really, and probably, in most cases, the students just make a mistake once and then pay more attention if he tells them to underlineunderlineunderline a word or a date or to highlight it instead.

So Amanda came to me and started complaining about the teacher and how unfair the whole situation was. She had known all the correctcorrectcorrect answers after all. She told me all this while I was cooking supper, so without even realising it, I said automatically: „the teacher is always right.” This is when I broke her heart. She started crying and asked me, „Could you please stop being so selfishselfishselfish?” I didn’t understand at first. All I was thinking about were the potatoes that I was cooking and my husband coming home later that evening. ObviouslyobviouslyObviously, my mind wasn’t with Amanda.

I took a deep breath and then we talked. We talked like never before. I realised that for the last few years, her schoolwork had been all that I had asked her about. I asked her questions like: Did you fill infill infill in all the gaps? Did you matchmatchmatch the words with the translations? Did you study? Did you get a good gradegradegrade today? Did you know the answer? And I had stopped asking about her life, her mood, her friends, and her emotions. I asked, „How was the test?’” but I stopped asking, „How are you?”

It was right then that I turned off the stovestovestove and asked her all the important questions. I learned that there was a boy she liked and that her best friend had betrayedbetrayed [betray]betrayed her. I learned that she felt lost when the group of friends was too big, that she hadn't been invited to a party at Sally's two weeks earlier, and that she didn’t understand what many of her friends were joking about. We talked for hours until it got dark and Ralph came back from work.

When he came home, the dinner wasn’t ready. But, more importantlymore importantlymore importantly, I was ready for something else. Ready to see Amanda as a human being and not as a student who has to study. I saw her as a teenager with all her problems. A teenager that has to cope withcope withcope with them somehow. And I was ready to start helping her.

1 Źródło: Konrad Gniazdowski, licencja: CC BY-SA 3.0.