Sick and Polite

Henry has had a very high fever since late yesterday afternoon. Since this usually follows a cold and is always accompanied by an ear infection I took him to the docs to have him checked out. Of course I was right. I don't like it when he's sick but what I do like is that it makes him so compliant and so polite and so loving. He wants to cuddle and he always says please and thank you and asks me if I'm alright even though I'm not the one who is sick.

Today at the doctor he was abnormally complaint and even opened his mouth to allow her to peer down his throat and she didn't even have to use that horrid dry timber stick thing they use to keep the tongue out of the way. He breathed in and out when asked to do so as she listened to his chest with the stethoscope and when she was done he got down from my lap, turned to the doc and said "Doctor, can I please have a lolly now?". She asked him to repeat what he had said simply because she wanted to hear him say it again so he obliged. She then asked him if he knew where they were. "Of course" he said. "They're behind your concuter (computer)".

Even I hadn't seen them there and maybe he just remembered from last time but that's exactly where they were. She took out the jar and offered him one. When he had finally made his selection he said "Thank you doctor. Have a nice day and thanks for checking me out. See you next time".

We departed to the sounds of the doctor's chuckles.

On another note - Maya had her end of term drama performances on Tuesday evening. I was completely impressed and in awe of those teenagers who wrote all the material themselves. Each drama group had a theme and they had to write that theme into a fifteen minute drama performance using miminal props. Maya's group did "Perceptions of Love". It was sad, funny and insprirational all at once. I had an insight into how 14 year olds view the idea of love. They started off with a short scene at a restaurant. Maya and her partner were bored with each other's company when he got a call on his mobile phone. He left suddenly and she was all alone in the restuarant looking decidely dejected. The next scene showed the two of them at work. She his secretary and he her boss. He calls her into his office and fires her - tells her he's bored with her and that he needs more excitement. She leaves in tears and runs into a friend who tells her he had seen him out with a blonde bimbo just nights before. She later confronts him and they have it out...the scene ends with the two of them standing alone on separate ends of the stage. They added a touch of humour but it was hard not to sense the drama and sadness of it all. It was hard not to want to wrap all those teenagers in my arms and tell them that love isn't always like that.

Another group decided to tackle the issues of single parenthood. That one was truly suicidally sad. I'm not sure which one of them or how many of them had come from broken homes but they certainly had some first hand knowledge of it and presented it as something real and tangible. They're mature understanding of it blew me away.

I tried drama at school but in my day it was limited to performing a play that was already years old and always written by someone else. There was never any license given to the students to create their own themes or use their own life experiences to write something thought provoking and worth watching. I gave up because I thought that learning how to type would be much more satisfying and someday would allow me to write my own crappy stories. Little did I know then though that someone would invent the personal computer for use at home and those fake love stories I typed up in class to give to my bestest friend could be stored somewhere other than a piece of paper that she would then show to the whole world at lunch time.