Dear Kid, Oops.

Quite enjoying writing these 'letters'. This next one has been in the pipeline for a bit now, inspired by daily run-ins and awkward situations.

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Dear kid who waited for me at the door,

I am sorry.

While you were busy waiting for my permission to walk in, I was busy coming to terms with being Teacher. There you stood, hand outstretched, desperately trying to catch my eye while your classmates did not know how to bring my attention to what was happening without being awkward or disrespectful. I promise I wasn’t punishing you, even though it seemed that way.

You see, no one has called me Teacher before. I was always Volunteer at best. I would sing songs and teach rhymes and we would all dance around in circles. And here you stand, waiting for me to ask you to sit, and it is my job to teach you how to spell grammar and then use it, how to pronounce pronunciation and then everything else, what vocabulary means and all the words that fall under it. While you stood at the door, I was trying to build a bridge between Volunteer and Teacher.

Dear kid who asked me for permission to drink water,

I am sorry.

While you were fervently clutching on to your blue plastic bottle and its precious mouthful of water, hoping that I wouldn’t ask you to wait till the end of class, I was hoping my muscle-memory spelling of ‘persuasion,’ was correct. There you sat, with your arm in the air, calling out to me, while my mind ran riot with the endless possibilities of how your life would change thanks to a wrong spelling in your middle school English class. What if the line between make and break lay exactly at the spelling of ‘persuasion’ and it would be my fault? After all, I backspaced twice even when I was typing this. While you sat with your arm in the air, I was standing with my back to you, thinking of synonyms.

Dear kid who wished me good morning from across the hall,

I am sorry.

While you were looking at me and smiling, all ashine with early morning enthusiasm, I was trying to pre-empt all the different questions I would be facing in the classroom. I was trying to form politically correct examples to teach the importance of capitals and the power of punctuation. Of course, I went off on a tangent from there to alliterations and prepositions…There you stood, looking hopefully for recognition and fiercely proud of how well-mannered you were being, while I was chalking out my armour for the rest of the day. While you watched me expectantly, I was looking over my shoulder, absentmindedly wondering who you were talking to.

Dear kid who kept standing in class,

I forgot to ask you to sit. Oops.

There are some moments you catch me off guard, minutes where that ‘English-kaari Akka’ is just staring into thin air plotting and planning in the safety of my head. But then, I promise you this - inside your classroom, I might not realise you are asking me for water or to walk in or sit down, but I do know the difference between my prepositions and conjunctions, between rhetoric and metaphor. And by the end of the year, hopefully so will you.