Boy Bewildered

My face splits into a blur on the webcam, my mouth twisted up in a rictus of wrongness. Long sleepless days make the world a fractal...

Today has been a long sleepless day. I'm moving back into my semi-finished house soon. I woke up dreaming of the maths problem I spent hours on last night, only solving later today (after a lot of head-crushing frustration). It wasn't even that hard a problem.

Today was ok. A few free lessons, a few moments of sunshine and some of cold. Yesterday during the play-hour for the junior school down the road a hilarious riot happened. We built a huge tower of jenga blocks. Well, huge at least for children. As each one came to examine it another would grab them and chuck them backwards, sometimes head-over heels to protect the tower. Then it fell, and the boys all went ape. I waded in, promising (foolishly) that when everything was put away, then they could wrestle. It was packed in 23 seconds, leaving two minutes of chaos.

I grabbed a couple of them, lifting them off the floor like a helicopter rescue. Some of them are lighter than flour, and come off the floor like they're frozen absolutely horizontal.

Then lunch was over, and I put them down for their hours of boredom and distraction and incompetent teaching.

Primary school could be the basis for everything. Instead it teaches you to read, write, misbehave and survive. Not bad lessons, but not enough.