Unwind

What do you do after a long day to relax yourself? I realise what is mine today. I'll stand in front of the mirror, flip my hair and look for white hairs. Then I'll pluck them out slowly until I find no more. But of course, each time I do that, there're always more to be found.

Maybe pulling out my white hair will cause damage to my hair roots. Maybe there'll be three more growing out after plucking one out. Maybe I'll become bald one day. But I love to pull out my grey strands. It's as if I'm removing all my worries and stress for the day.

Today I didn't really have a wonderful day. In fact, I left school feeling kinda guilty. I made J pissed off. I love all my colleagues in school. Really. Ok, at least most of them. They're more like my friends than colleagues. So what actually happened was my incessant teasing of J made her quite put off and then she decided to give me the silent treatment. That's when I realised I've carried the joke too far and decided to apologise. Just before I left school, I apologised to her again and though she said it was ok, I still felt bad.

That's when I thought about how I always scold my pupils for talking without using their brains. I think I'm guilty of that sometimes. I was reflecting on the day on my way back home and recalled an incident that happened two years back.

It happened between me and a pupil. Let's call him K. K is quite a notorious pupil in school but he's really quite a nice guy. That year that I was teaching his class, it was quite bad cos the class is not very interested in studies, what's more math. So teaching them can make you quite fed up sometimes. So one day, I can't really remember details but after some bantering about in class with K, I looked into his face and said, 'I hate the class because of you.'

K didn't take it as a joke and left the class immediately. Initially I thought he was just kidding but later I realised he's not cos he not only left class, he left the school compound. His classmates called him and he refused to say a single thing. That's when his friends came to me and say,'Cher, you know inside his bag only got your math ten-year-series you know. He doesn't even bring the rest of the books.' I felt immensely guilty and embarrassed by my own actions.

From that day onwards, I told myself to be kind to my pupils so that I won't hurt their feelings. K accepted my apologies eventually but he still brings this up as a joke at times. This teachers' day when he came back to visit me, he also brought it up. I guess sometimes the words a teacher says to his or her pupils really do have an impact on them.

Which reminds me of a short clip that I watched.

www.makeadifferencemovie.com

It is very inspiring and sometimes I think teachers need that little reminder to help us remember what brought us into teaching in the first place.

Humans always tend to take people that are dear to us for granted. You will never think about saying mean things to strangers. But sometimes we'll say the meanest things to people that are close to us cos we assume that they'll be able to accept what we say. And more often than not, regretting after hurting the other's feelings is just too late. I wish I had contained my tongue.

On another note, my legs are getting really red. They're like char siew pig trotters. Fat, red and well, fat. Seems like all the blood are being rushed to my legs. Something is just not right with me. Blame it on the hormones. During pregnancy, I realised that everything can just be blamed on hormones. Diarrhoea, hormones. Breakouts, hormones. Sleepless nights, hormones. Basically, everything, hormones. Only difference is the name of the hormones that is causing the different symptons.