rubber-soled shoes seemingly stuck to the rug. He reaches out for the wall with his right hand to catch himself but drops to his knees anyway. He then quickly looks up at me as I lift my gaze from my wristwatch.
“Twelve seconds!” I say. “Well done, Paolo. Now let’s try again.”
When I help him to his feet he lets his whole body go, as if drained. It looks horrible, but he does it to save his strength. I understand this only later. There are so many things we come to understand only later. The weak, on the other hand, lucid in the vast wealth of their resources, understand right away.
He’s standing up again. I let go for a second but he falls backward. His eyes glaze over as if he has been hit by something. I manage to grab his arm. His inert weight makes him do a half twirl before slamming into the wall and sliding to the ground like a marionette. He’s slow at using his arms to block his fall. He’s slow at acquiring through reflection those movements that the so-called reflexes provide without thinking. He lost all bodily knowledge and has to relearn it consciously. Millions of years condensed into a decade: he has to simulate naturalness, imitate swiftness, and fake alacrity. This is his second birth—and it’s into a world in which even we are becoming disabled.
“Would you please stop making the child fall?” Franca calls out from down the hall.
Parents’ Meeting
One of the parents—a smug chubby woman, a math teacher by profession—poses a problem to the group. She gestures delicately with her hands. You can tell she likes to hear herself speak; that’s why she says she wants to hear what we have to say. It works every time.
I have decided to simplify her polished language, which overflows with syntactical affectations and refined parenthetical clauses, illuminated by a noun— idiolect —thrown in with weighty nonchalance. To simplify (and declare as much) is one of the despotic and comforting privileges of the omniscient narrator, a figure who has been despised both in the past as well as by me (they actually know so very little).
The problem is this: her thirteen-year-old son, who has an attention deficit disorder, as the person next to me callously but succinctly explains, can’t keep up with her when she tutors him in math, and she grows impatient with him.
“What do you do?” the doctor asks. I can see she’s growing impatient, too.
“I slap him, but then I feel worse than he does.”
How typically egocentric, I think to myself, to take pride in guilt as well as in merit.
“It’s not enough to feel bad,” the doctor scolds her. “You just can’t do that!”
“I know,” she says contritely. “That’s why I wanted your opinion. I don’t know why I do it.”
I’ve always been afraid of math teachers, even when they indulged me, even when they went back over things I never would have understood on my own and explained them from the beginning, calmly and clearly. Actually, it was at those times above all that I felt I was being suffocated by panic because my sense of guilt would increase. Their knowledge was like a form of highly disciplined and extremely logical terrorism.
“Interrupt your lesson,” the doctor suggests calmly. “Go and get something to drink. Distract yourself. You just cannot do that to your child!”
“I know,” she replies, simulating uncontrollable anxiety. “But what I’d really like to know”—she’s knitting her fingers together—“is why I react like that. Where does it come from? Intuitively, I think I know, but I’d like confirmation.”
Another thing: They always know the answer. They only want an audience to hear them out.
“It’s love-hate, don’t you think?” she says, almost begging. “That’s what we feel for our children. We love them too much.”
Like many mothers who don’t really feel it, she fakes an epic sense of maternity. The words of an American pedagogue come to mind: “If you want to do more for
“Twelve seconds!” I say. “Well done, Paolo. Now let’s try again.”
When I help him to his feet he lets his whole body go, as if drained. It looks horrible, but he does it to save his strength. I understand this only later. There are so many things we come to understand only later. The weak, on the other hand, lucid in the vast wealth of their resources, understand right away.
He’s standing up again. I let go for a second but he falls backward. His eyes glaze over as if he has been hit by something. I manage to grab his arm. His inert weight makes him do a half twirl before slamming into the wall and sliding to the ground like a marionette. He’s slow at using his arms to block his fall. He’s slow at acquiring through reflection those movements that the so-called reflexes provide without thinking. He lost all bodily knowledge and has to relearn it consciously. Millions of years condensed into a decade: he has to simulate naturalness, imitate swiftness, and fake alacrity. This is his second birth—and it’s into a world in which even we are becoming disabled.
“Would you please stop making the child fall?” Franca calls out from down the hall.
Parents’ Meeting
One of the parents—a smug chubby woman, a math teacher by profession—poses a problem to the group. She gestures delicately with her hands. You can tell she likes to hear herself speak; that’s why she says she wants to hear what we have to say. It works every time.
I have decided to simplify her polished language, which overflows with syntactical affectations and refined parenthetical clauses, illuminated by a noun— idiolect —thrown in with weighty nonchalance. To simplify (and declare as much) is one of the despotic and comforting privileges of the omniscient narrator, a figure who has been despised both in the past as well as by me (they actually know so very little).
The problem is this: her thirteen-year-old son, who has an attention deficit disorder, as the person next to me callously but succinctly explains, can’t keep up with her when she tutors him in math, and she grows impatient with him.
“What do you do?” the doctor asks. I can see she’s growing impatient, too.
“I slap him, but then I feel worse than he does.”
How typically egocentric, I think to myself, to take pride in guilt as well as in merit.
“It’s not enough to feel bad,” the doctor scolds her. “You just can’t do that!”
“I know,” she says contritely. “That’s why I wanted your opinion. I don’t know why I do it.”
I’ve always been afraid of math teachers, even when they indulged me, even when they went back over things I never would have understood on my own and explained them from the beginning, calmly and clearly. Actually, it was at those times above all that I felt I was being suffocated by panic because my sense of guilt would increase. Their knowledge was like a form of highly disciplined and extremely logical terrorism.
“Interrupt your lesson,” the doctor suggests calmly. “Go and get something to drink. Distract yourself. You just cannot do that to your child!”
“I know,” she replies, simulating uncontrollable anxiety. “But what I’d really like to know”—she’s knitting her fingers together—“is why I react like that. Where does it come from? Intuitively, I think I know, but I’d like confirmation.”
Another thing: They always know the answer. They only want an audience to hear them out.
“It’s love-hate, don’t you think?” she says, almost begging. “That’s what we feel for our children. We love them too much.”
Like many mothers who don’t really feel it, she fakes an epic sense of maternity. The words of an American pedagogue come to mind: “If you want to do more for
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