Finishing test first doesn’t make you number one

I don’t know if this still happens today. But this prospect sure freaked out Pudd’ng when, a couple of days to closing day last term, I told her it was not compulsory for her to go to school.

She gave me her usual “teacher said” line. Which means I should question nothing, even if it’s a big, fat lie, like …

“Teacher said those who don’t go to school won’t be promoted to class three.”

“There’s nothing you’re going to do in school tomorrow,” I argued.

“Teacher said …”

That’s how I ended up being the lone parent with his daughter — at a usually bustling bus stop — at six-something a.m. And that’s not even the half of it.

After alighting from the matatu, Pudd’ng always insists we run to school because of an ongoing bet she has with one of her classmates: Who will arrive first?

Back to school for parents

Tenderoni and I have to learn that, just as this is a new class for our daughter, it is also a new class for us. From the look of things, there are tests we flunked, which we now have to retake, or even “repeat” a whole class altogether. We both know what they are.

Each time Pudd’ng tells us they are going to do exams, we tell her that after she is done, she shouldn’t just sit pretty.

“Go through your paper carefully. Through all the questions. Again and again. Till the teacher tells you the time is up.”

This was prompted after she once boasted to us that she is always the first pupil to finish doing her papers. To her, this was some feat. We made her know that finishing one’s paper first doesn’t mean she’s number one.

Same rule applies to us. Tenderoni and I will have to look critically at our test papers. See the papers that we played to merely finish. Sometimes, in a relationship, it can be second nature to play husband/wife, till one can do it with their eyes closed. It’s called familiarity.

The early baby

“I miss waking up early in the morning and going to school,” Pudd’ng told me in early December.

Mostly, throughout the holidays, she has been sleeping till around mid-morning. It’s only on Saturdays that she wakes up early, sometimes as early as 6.30 a.m., to watch an educational programme that comes on a local television channel.

One thing I give my baby girl is, we have never dragged her out of bed. In fact, at times, when we feel she has woken up too early, we tell her to return to bed.

Which she does grudgingly. I reckon that, in her mind, she sees that classmate arriving before her. I’m back to jogging, stage to school gate, and cutting the December calories.

Failing the future

Last term, Pudd’ng did not do well in her exams because of our separation. From the way she took it, I could read that baby girl thought she had failed us. I have made it my habit not to berate my daughter on account of her academic performance.

Children shouldn’t be made to ever feel like they have failed their parents. On this one, it was Tenderoni and I who dropped the ball. Long story short: Last term, we failed the future leader.

Like many other things that happen when such issues arise, we did not immediately see this coming.

This term round, and going forward, I hope that, as Tenderoni and I work out our issues, and possibly get a resolution sooner rather than later, our daughter will not bear the brunt much longer than she ought to.

Psst. Seeing an ad on TV about a local private university, Pudd’ng gets thinking … loud. Whenever she puts her little legs in her mouth, I have to put a big gag in mine.

Her question is about academic progression in the 8-4-4 system. But she has got it all innocently mixed up, or she’s playing with my mind.

“Dah-dee?” Pudd’ng queries. “When I finish class eight, do I go to university and then Form One?”