Me, a young rebel

When I was very little I was a rebel. Yes, I was. At the age of three, I used to refuse to go to kinder garden, and I preferred instead to spend my days with my grand mother playing with her, watching her cooking or washing clothes by hand, playing with my mum's clothes and makeup, or just sit in front of the fire place with her in the cold wintery days. I even created my own space under the kitchen table. I painted the internal part of it with drawings representing rooms, and that was my house. If you stick the nose under my parents' kitchen table, you still will see some scrabbles. In some occasions, my teacher--who was also my aunt--would come to my house to try and persuade me to go to the nursery school like any other child; so, I had sometimes to give up my stubbornness of remaining an *illiterate* and my laziness. In fact being at school was not always so disastrous, I would enjoy working on nice projects for daddy's day, Christmas, or for someone else's birthday. But I did not like the rules: I did not like that you were not allowed to drink water while eating soup (“cold with hot would upset your tummy”-- they used to explain) and that you had to drop your head on the table and have a forced nap after every meal. I would always be with one eye closed and the other wide open staring at the watch and hoping that torture would finish soon. One day I got ill, and loved it. They put me on a portable bed in the garden, covered me with a blanket, and all the children were asked to be gentle with me: they all came to me to make sure I was okay and to ask if I needed something. My mum was concerned that I would have done the same fuss with elementary school. So, she decided to move from a full- to a part time job to have more time to dedicate to me and my upbringing. (I am not still so sure this was a good idea for me!) For her surprise, at school I was a model pupil. At the beginning, it was a bit demanding for me who still couldn't read and write at the age of six (which is when in Italy you start primary school) because nobody taught me it before and I had missed far too many classes at kinder garden level to have actually learnt it properly. I just knew the alphabet letters which our nursery teacher had forced us to write hundred of times in our notebook—another rule I really didn't like. However, I loved to go to school, do homework and study different subjects. When I actually learnt how to read, it was a big discovery for me. My dream at the time was to become a teacher. I used to spend many afternoons with my grand mum obliging her to listen to my lessons and act as my student. I still like teaching and sharing my knowledge (hence one of the reasons why I opened a blog), but I don’t like patronising (although I have done it sometimes with my younger cousin and my boyfriend) and judging people in the cold way the business mentality selects human resources: based on results, experience and specific skills. Full stop. See my post "interviewing experience". ... I much prefer observing, ... as yoga teaches...