Yesterday, I had proof – if ever it was needed – that I am not as smart as a five year-old. Despite my painstaking attempts to conceal my fistula with a series of carefully orchestrated (and may I say, sartorially impressive) ensembles, the kiddies at school found it.
Friday marked the end of my second week in my new job as a teaching assistant in a primary school in East London and so far, so wonderful. I go in five mornings a week and work one-on-one with T, an adorable little girl with Down Syndrome, though my purview extends to helping out with the other children as and when needed. Despite their seemingly endless wails of, “Rwwooooosy, he said he wouldn’t be friends with me/play with me/that I was a baby…”, the kiddies are a joy to be around: they are bright, funny and curious. They particularly enjoy being near me; any qualms one might have about invasion of personal space should be left at the door between the box of skipping ropes and the drinking fountain. They hold my hand; they stroke my legs; they climb onto my lap for a cuddle or burrow into my flank like ducklings seeking refuge from the wind. Currently, a favourite past-time is fastening and un-fastening the buckle on my trench coat, an activity for which they line up and attack with glee and I let them, 1) because it is enhancing their fine motor skills and 2) because the coat was 10% off from…ahem…Jane Norman.
It was only a matter of time before my tactile little rascals chanced upon my fistula. I should have known it was going to happen when, after a few days, some of them prodded my collar-bone where my neck-line scars lie and demanded, “What’s that?”. I put on my best when-mummy-and-daddies-love-each-other-very-much voice and gently relayed that I had been sick and had to have an operation but it had made me all better. Technically, this is not so much a half-truth as a full-blown lie but I’m fairly sure part of my job description is not to give them nightmares, so I left out the part about the tube hanging out of my chest. Fortunately, my lame explanation appeased them and they skipped off merrily to colour something in.
However, I’m not sure such vagueness is going to fly now they have found the pulsating lump in my left arm. They are rapidly becoming obsessed with it. Three of them discovered it in the playground yesterday and took it in turns to touch it (“Stroke it gently,” I urged nervously, with visions of the thing exploding and turning the hopscotch square into an abattoir). Then they ran off to collect more friends to come and touch it. “It tickles me!” they squealed delightedly. Then they demanded to see it (“But it’s too cold to take my coat off…”) and finally, thwarted in their efforts, they simply wanted to know what it was which is entirely understandable – some guy on the tube randomly asked me once.
Are you sitting comfortably children? Then I shall begin. Two and a half years ago, the transplanted kidney my mother donated to me ten years earlier failed, and in order to stop me DYING and I had to have an OPERATION, where the surgeons HACKED open my arm and tied an artery to a vein so that three times a week I have GIANT NEEDLES pushed into the THROBBING BULGE in my arm. Now who wants to see it? No-one?
Bless them, but during their daily twenty minutes of Literacy, the kiddies are still getting to grips with The Cat Sat On The Mat (And Saw A Rat – that was when we did rhyme last week) so perhaps a discourse on the intricacies of renal failure and dialysis is a tad inappropriate. Not to mention the fact I haven’t actually mentioned my condition to any of my colleagues and the quickest way to out myself would be to let on to a gaggle of over-stimulated five year-olds who’s idea of discretion is waiting until the teacher isn’t looking to pick their noses. Consequently, I found myself having to think on my feet as to what to tell them, and using my degree from Durham and substantial vocabulary, this is what I came up with: “I have a bump in my arm.”
The kiddies looked at me with blank expressions. Er, yes (they said with their eyes): that much we’ve gathered. I am an idiot. Everyone knows the quickest way to compound the kiddies’ interest in something is to imbue it with mystery. They know it’s a bump in my arm because they can fucking feel it a bump in my arm: what they want to know is how it came to be there. So far, I have nothing. In my previous life as a secondary teacher, my students saw right through my: I was attacked by a crocodile/Drew Barrymore’s stunt double/saving orphans from a burning building accounts. Furthermore, the warmer the weather gets, the more likely it is that I am going to be forced to wear something short sleeved unless I want to keel over or loose half a stone in perspiration. I am going to have to think of something to tell them; just enough information to sate their curiosity but nothing specific, or technical, or won’t-sleep-for-a-month gory. You can’t kid a kidder just as you can’t lie to the kiddies; being all but incapable of blurting out anything other than the unabridged truth themselves, they can smell the lies on your skin. For now, I’ll just have to keep covering it up with militarily planned outfit choices and distract them with something shiny when the questions start again.
Friday marked the end of my second week in my new job as a teaching assistant in a primary school in East London and so far, so wonderful. I go in five mornings a week and work one-on-one with T, an adorable little girl with Down Syndrome, though my purview extends to helping out with the other children as and when needed. Despite their seemingly endless wails of, “Rwwooooosy, he said he wouldn’t be friends with me/play with me/that I was a baby…”, the kiddies are a joy to be around: they are bright, funny and curious. They particularly enjoy being near me; any qualms one might have about invasion of personal space should be left at the door between the box of skipping ropes and the drinking fountain. They hold my hand; they stroke my legs; they climb onto my lap for a cuddle or burrow into my flank like ducklings seeking refuge from the wind. Currently, a favourite past-time is fastening and un-fastening the buckle on my trench coat, an activity for which they line up and attack with glee and I let them, 1) because it is enhancing their fine motor skills and 2) because the coat was 10% off from…ahem…Jane Norman.
It was only a matter of time before my tactile little rascals chanced upon my fistula. I should have known it was going to happen when, after a few days, some of them prodded my collar-bone where my neck-line scars lie and demanded, “What’s that?”. I put on my best when-mummy-and-daddies-love-each-other-very-much voice and gently relayed that I had been sick and had to have an operation but it had made me all better. Technically, this is not so much a half-truth as a full-blown lie but I’m fairly sure part of my job description is not to give them nightmares, so I left out the part about the tube hanging out of my chest. Fortunately, my lame explanation appeased them and they skipped off merrily to colour something in.
However, I’m not sure such vagueness is going to fly now they have found the pulsating lump in my left arm. They are rapidly becoming obsessed with it. Three of them discovered it in the playground yesterday and took it in turns to touch it (“Stroke it gently,” I urged nervously, with visions of the thing exploding and turning the hopscotch square into an abattoir). Then they ran off to collect more friends to come and touch it. “It tickles me!” they squealed delightedly. Then they demanded to see it (“But it’s too cold to take my coat off…”) and finally, thwarted in their efforts, they simply wanted to know what it was which is entirely understandable – some guy on the tube randomly asked me once.
Are you sitting comfortably children? Then I shall begin. Two and a half years ago, the transplanted kidney my mother donated to me ten years earlier failed, and in order to stop me DYING and I had to have an OPERATION, where the surgeons HACKED open my arm and tied an artery to a vein so that three times a week I have GIANT NEEDLES pushed into the THROBBING BULGE in my arm. Now who wants to see it? No-one?
Bless them, but during their daily twenty minutes of Literacy, the kiddies are still getting to grips with The Cat Sat On The Mat (And Saw A Rat – that was when we did rhyme last week) so perhaps a discourse on the intricacies of renal failure and dialysis is a tad inappropriate. Not to mention the fact I haven’t actually mentioned my condition to any of my colleagues and the quickest way to out myself would be to let on to a gaggle of over-stimulated five year-olds who’s idea of discretion is waiting until the teacher isn’t looking to pick their noses. Consequently, I found myself having to think on my feet as to what to tell them, and using my degree from Durham and substantial vocabulary, this is what I came up with: “I have a bump in my arm.”
The kiddies looked at me with blank expressions. Er, yes (they said with their eyes): that much we’ve gathered. I am an idiot. Everyone knows the quickest way to compound the kiddies’ interest in something is to imbue it with mystery. They know it’s a bump in my arm because they can fucking feel it a bump in my arm: what they want to know is how it came to be there. So far, I have nothing. In my previous life as a secondary teacher, my students saw right through my: I was attacked by a crocodile/Drew Barrymore’s stunt double/saving orphans from a burning building accounts. Furthermore, the warmer the weather gets, the more likely it is that I am going to be forced to wear something short sleeved unless I want to keel over or loose half a stone in perspiration. I am going to have to think of something to tell them; just enough information to sate their curiosity but nothing specific, or technical, or won’t-sleep-for-a-month gory. You can’t kid a kidder just as you can’t lie to the kiddies; being all but incapable of blurting out anything other than the unabridged truth themselves, they can smell the lies on your skin. For now, I’ll just have to keep covering it up with militarily planned outfit choices and distract them with something shiny when the questions start again.
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