Never Listen To Nonsense

Take a moment, close your eyes, picture a boy 10, maybe 11, with short blonde hair cut close to his scalp, thick glasses, and holding complete desire to isolate himself from his peers, or more likely, being forced into isolation. This boy in your mind is now sitting in my classroom here in Czech Republic, and not in my big city, Novy Bydzov, with a population of over 7,000, but rather in one of the smaller towns I teach in, Smidary, just brushing up against 1,000 people. Picture him as he sits there each day left out of the friendly banter between children and stares aimlessly out of the window, daydreaming, of what, I do not know, but I see and you should see him week in and week out being left out, left alone, and simply, nothing more, nothing less, looking off into the distant through the glass pane of the second floor of the small schoolhouse as if at nothing.

Now picture me standing in front of this class with the boy in the corner standing at least a foot taller than all the children, and most probably closer to two feet taller, just simply an imposing figure. This classroom of children with just one carrying glasses on their adolescent faces, thick and awkward-looking as they nearly cover his entire face. See me towering over these seemingly harmless and most importantly, for the most part, well behaved, and attentive, but like all children, thoughtless of their peers feelings. I am explaining to them that they need to pull their chairs into the middle of the class and arrange them in a circle. Normally, this boy would never have been part of any circle of his peers if he was not put there. Either children would force him away or he would have shyly back away out of fear of those same children just eventually pushing him from their inner circle.

Example, an assignment earlier in class was to go around the class with your group of whom you designed a certain type of store with and as all the children met in the middle to decide on their shopping list. I found him out of the corner of my eye doing what he always had done, sitting, and staring out of the windowpane of the second floor of the tiny schoolhouse. I did not intervene at that point; I should have, but did not.

Well, back to the scene you have in your mind of the class all sitting in one big circle. Now thinking of these children’s ages, see them, all the boys sitting to one side and all the girls sitting to the other. The only points, which brought a boy and a girl together in the circle was the places where it was unworkable otherwise, it would be impossible for two boys not to sit next to two girls. During the start of the activity, a game of “telephone,” you know the age-old game everyone has played at least once in their lives, where a phrase is given to one person then passed to the next so on and so forth through the circle, I did not hear a complaint from the boys placed next to the girls, but the girls on the other hand first one then the other, the one who happened to be sitting next to the boy in glasses, complained with a fever. Since the first girl complained first I did not even think to make a deal of when the second girl asked to have the boy with the glasses switched with another boy. Watch me as I without a thought replaced the boy on one side then the boy with glasses.

The circle was now complete. The game was ready to begin. We played a few rounds, the kids having a good time, losing the phrases by the time they spread full circle, the phrase completely distorted. See all the children laughing as they passed the phrases, all the children except the one, the one with the thick, awkward glasses.

Now imagine, picture, and see this final round of a game, a game meant to be fun. I walk across the middle of circle of children to a boy sitting next to the boy with glasses, I give him a phrase, which he takes a moment to memorize, and then I tell him to pass the phrase to his left to the boy with glasses. Then I walk back across the circle as the boy leans to tell the phrase. He says it once and I, and hopefully you, see the shy boy pushing up his glasses and struggling with all his might to understand what he is being told. Again and once again the phrase is repeated to the boy, who is getting more and more flushed. Then hear the booms of three girl’s shouts at the boy already embarrassed, already upset with his inability to comprehend the English words being whispered into his ear repeatedly.

Hear the girls shouting for the one boy to skip over the boy having trouble, the boy who does not need the help of these girls to feel bad about his situation. See the boy lower his head, his face now completely red, his eyes starting to fill with tears, his throat swelling at rapid pace, and him backing his chair from the circle, the same as he always had done in the past. Letting others force him from the circle.

This is the point you can picture my massive frame in comparison to theirs as I march into the middle of the circle and turn square to the girls with all their chatter, all their nonsense. I explode, “Shut your mouths!” Hear the silence fall onto the room. See me spin around in the dead silence and walk up closely to the boy. Once close to him I wait for him to regain some type of composure and I give him my best reassuring glancing, telling him, “You can do it, forget about them.”

Reaching down I grab his chair and pull him back into the circle where I have the boy repeat the phrase to him. Although it is just a whisper I hear the boy with the glasses catch the phrase and pass it along perfectly. I swivel around toward the girls who had been harassing them a shoot glance in each of their eyes informing them if I hear another peep out of them hell would break lose. They understood.

Hear the bell sounding the end of class and the end of the school day for these children ring loudly. I have all the children put their tables back in order and their chairs on top of those tables. See their backs as they walk out of the classroom. The girls I had reamed with their heads down in shame and then Patrik walking out behind the group.

I shout out, “Patrik.” And I call him over to me.

I make the worldly-known symbol, which shows when people talk too much nonsense, making my hand into a mouth and clapping my fingers together rapidly.

Patrik smiles, he understands. Now, see, as I saw, Patrik walk from the classroom, not with his head down as usual, but with his head held firmly in the air.