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Being a (very) part time teacher is very rewarding (but I wouldn’t like to be in charge of 30 kids or even one for more than 45 minutes at a time. The teachers at Phoebe’s school have been doing a great job - she can read well and write a bit and is good with numbers and shapes. Today we played hangman and did some science experiments with test tubes (we were just mixing different coloured food dyes but it still felt like we were Frankingsteins).
Phoebe drew an 8 on the blackboard by putting one circle on top of another. It reminded me of one of the major childhood traumas in my cushy, lovely childhood (forgive me if I have written about this before). I was unable to draw 8s properly (ie in one continuous flow of the pen or pencil) for a very long time. To begin with I did the circle snowman thing, but my dad (who has always valued academic achievement and pushed us in that direction) was appalled that I was unable to do them properly. If I managed to do them “properly” they always came out lying on their side and your sums really get messed up if you mistake 8 for infinity.
I remember sitting in the cupboard under the stairs like Harry Potter, practising my 8s and (maybe my memory is exaggerating) crying at my own ineptitude. Yes, I was 28 years old at the time.
No I wasn’t, but I must have been somewhere around 6-8 as we moved from that house after that (I am fully expecting an email from my mum telling me that we never had an understairs cupboard - our memories are unreliable). I just knew that I was disappointing my dad and I wanted to impress him (the more I pick apart my obsessions the more I wonder how much I have done in my life to that effect - I recall how impressed he was that Miles Kington wrote a funny column every day in the Independent: Am I trying to impress him with this blog?) and I also knew that he feared that I wasn’t clever and that meant (it seemed) everything to him.
In the end I did have an aptitude for maths and nearly did it at University (again, I think I thought I had to do it, because that is what my dad had done), but I wasn’t as good as him at Maths and I made the right decision to change course (a little late - I did a term of Physics before switching to English and plumping for a History degree. I still did 2 Maths A levels).
I know my dad just wanted to best for us all and he certainly installed the work ethic in me that has helped me be competitive in buy chosen career. He wouldn’t have been pleased if he’d known that I would use this power for cock jokes, but I think I have also somehow inherited a portion of my father’s sense of decency and selflessness, even if my charitable actions are maybe more ostentatious than his.
I am aware there are worse childhood traumas than being upset that you can’t draw 8s because it made your dad worried you might be thick, but it clearly mattered at the time and the tiny scar flared up today as I watched my daughter make the same mistakes.
Except I then said that I knew a better way to do 8s and showed her how to do it in one movement. I realised now I looked at it that all you had to do was do a S and a reverse S and bang, you had an 8. How had no one ever told me that when I was crying in the coal shed (probably in there too)? They probably did, but I was too stupid to do it.
My daughter took up the chalk and (I guess because of my brilliant teaching) immediately cracked out a perfect 8. Lucky for her or I’d have locked her in the tiny cellar under out kitchen without any lights on until she’d got it right.
I felt proud of her for being better than the 8 year old me, when she was just 5 (imagine being 8 and not being able to write your own age) and a bit in awe of her ability to understand and do it straight away. Her grandad will be pleased with her and proud of her. Which might mean she doesn’t spend the rest of her days striving to impress him.
Thanks to all of you who have already linked up your Amazon Prime and Twitch accounts and gifted me your first $5 a month. We’ve had enough to pay for all the stuff we had to buy in order to Twitch so that’s cool. If you’re with Amazon Prime you have free monthly money to donate to a Twitcher of your choice, so use it and tell anyone else with Amazon Prime to do the same. You don’t even have to watch my stupid channel.
Remember to come back every month. I will use the money I receive to make more content and give to the comedians charity just giving page.
