Boy on the Bahn

26/2/14

I never know how to react or behave with curious kids in public.  Yes, I am always keen to help, or to coax a smile, making silly faces but usually the parents are with their children and I get a knowing smile or at worst a cold hard stare from a guardian.
But what to do with those curious kids that want to engage with the world?  If a child has a question for me I'd like to answer it!  I am a teacher after all.

I stepped onto the Straßenbahn this evening, there was an on-going dialogue between a father and son.  As my German is not so good I was able to filter it out as background noise.  I was standing by the tram door, when we stopped the man who I had thought was the child's father hopped off and called back.
'Tschüss!'
I thought it was a ruse. I watched and waited for him to step back on and into the carriage.  He didn't.
It is obvious to me now that he had answered what he felt to be a sufficient number of questions.  Perhaps, his brain had melted under the barrage of that persistent search for clarity.  Whatever the reason he had had enough and threw himself out into the dark air of the night in a bid to escape that pint-sized antagonist.

I had really thought him to be the boy's father.
He sat alone momentarily. No sooner had the doors closed and my escape hindered, nay impossible, he turned his attention to me.  I don't know how he started.  I was rocking back and forth in a blissful daydream, happy that my working day had ended.  He quietly ascertained that I was not a local.  The conversation in German went something like this,
...
Boy:  Do you live here?
Me :  Yes, I live here. I'm -
Boy :  Are you on holidays?
Me :   No, I work here as an English teacher.
Boy :  A stoner?
Me :   No, no. An English teacher.  English-
Boy:   Oh I do English at school. I'll have more classes next year.
Me:    Oh, can you speak English!?
Boy:   Yes.
Me:    And will you go to Gymnasium next year?
Boy:  Yes, (says something I don't understand).
Me:   Pardon?
Boy:  (Says something and then) Will you be one of the teachers? (I think).
Me:  No, no. Maybe (I'm at a loss here). I work in one school.  A school in Floridsdorf.
Boy: You can speak in English!
(I was thrilled that he was so keen to practise!)
Me: I used to work in different schools last year. I worked in different schools last year. .

He thought to himself for a bit.  He looked puzzled,  and then simply nodded and walked off.
Either he was startled by my incomprehensible accent or I had begun to bore him.  He walked to the top of the tram.  I held on to the handrail, worried that I had offended him and worried too that some of the passengers would think I had interfered with him and caused his abrupt departure. Maybe we were nearing his stop or more likely he was so engrossed in conversation he had missed it.  Maybe it was even several stops back.

I thought about this encounter briefly before the tram scratched to a halt.
If a child has a question it ought to be answered.  We need to make time for them and not dismiss their quest for knowledge.  Not all strangers pose dangers.  There is something heart-warming about children who love learning and talking to the world. They shouldn't fear but they should be aware.  I hope they learn a lot and grow up to be people who can talk to people.  I admire that curiosity but I cannot help but worry for their safety. So reserved, so frightened and so awkward are we adults sometimes, frightened of our peers, our fellow man and fearful for our children.

People I wanted to be

People I wanted to be

We all wanted to be someone else at some point. We may have envisaged a totally different lifestyle to that we now live. It is true, that youthful optimism and naiveté often play a role, we dream of being wealthy people, influential and famous people. Some of us never stop dreaming.

When I was a child I thought I would be many different things. I saw myself as a mechanic, a farmer and an agricultural contractor once upon a time. I loved yokes; cars and tractors and vehicles of all kinds. I enjoyed (and still do) attending vintage shows and agricultural/agrarian displays. The smell of diesel and greasy oiled engines still teases my senses and draws to mind memories and thoughts of what might have been.

When I was a little fellow I wasn't sure I would go college or university. I enjoyed Primary School. I love the creative aspect of education. At school I liked arts and crafts, and after a point I attempted to introduce an imaginative element to my story writing. Drawing and painting are fun. I watched Art Attack and Rolf Harris and thought that being an artist or a cartoonist looked like a great deal of fun. My older brother had an active imagination. He used to draw a little comic that he shared only with the family. Charles Caleb Colton said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery and flatter I did. I drew my own poorly drawn comic (often after my brother had finished one) with a skull-capped crocodile and hellish aliens determined to ravish the Earth with plans so heinous I had not yet thought them through in their entirety. I won a few prizes in art competitions and had 2 drawings shown on National TV but otherwise my ambitions came to nought.

I thought about being a teacher from time to time and then thought nothing more of it.

I wanted to be an actor at various points. I even had a chance to test my mettle. I was 'Ernie' in Ernie's Incredible Hallucinations. My class, 1C performed this play for our peers during the first year of secondary school. I auditioned for the school's biennial musical, 'Grease'. I don't believe I can sing but I was disappointed that after a call-back I was relegated to the chorus. I wasn't much of a dancer and soon dropped out.

When I thought of acting, I mostly saw myself in productions penned by my own hand. At some point I came to prefer the idea of sculpting characters through writing and direction. 

I became interested in writing during the latter years of Primary school. After many years of writing 'The News' and unwittingly relaying the local controversies and family gossip to our teachers, there came a chance to write stories with a little more creativity. There were different stories and prompts that inspired stories of time travel and adventure. The turning point I remember was the homework assignment 'My life as a circus performer'. While others wrote dull and banal stories of clowns and aristocratic acrobats I remembered what my teacher had told us about the Romans and the Colosseum. Namely, that Gladiators and their violent performance as entertainment was like a modern circus. I got to work writing my ancient epic about a day in the life of a gladiator. I received a lot of praise for this story. My teacher described it as 'original' & 'novel'. I began to take writing more seriously and whenever I had to write a story as part of my homework or exam preparation I would spend a lot of time considering an original and provocative storyline.  Later I would begin to jot down ideas in a notebook but not until much later in my teenage years. I tried my hand at poetry, a poem I had written when I was 12 and submitted to a competition was later published in an anthology of children's submissions. I attempted to write a comedy for the school Christmas concert at the age of 13. But a play about a dating TV show gone wrong performed by awkward, lazy and hormonal teenagers exposed my short-sightedness. On the morning of our performance I pulled the plug. The cast had disintegrated. I tried writing a play again at university. Being an English and German student I thought I would follow in the footsteps of Marlowe and Goethe and retell or reboot Doctor Faustus for a student audience. It was never finished but the Uni writer's circle organised a reading rehearsal and I had the chance to perform a piece on air after an interview on local radio.
I am still thinking this one over.

I have thought about being a doctor, a nurse, a counsellor, a politician & I have thought about who and what I want to be now. What work would I be good at? What work might I enjoy?

Whenever my mind slips into a state of panic and I worry about the point, purpose and my role in this life, I remember what John Lennon said.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”