Kindergarten

The niece has been learning about life the hard way.

She came home from school last week and told us how Amaya (a nasty, prissy bully, also the most popular girl in class) had asked everyone ‘Who is Shreya’s friend’ and said that anyone who said that they were Shreya’s friend could not be friends with her, but the brave niece did not give in to peer pressure and put up her hand.

However, she brushed aside my sister’s praise and said, “But mummy, Shreya started crying and said ‘No one is my friend’, but I put up my hand so she did have one friend so why did she say that?”

The other day I went to pick her up from school and she came running towards me and said “You know my friend Salil, he has nails as sharp as three pencils and mistakely he poked my eyeball with it. I cried just a little and then didi blew on it and told Salil and me to go to the tap to wash it, and when we had gone out of the class and didi couldn’t hear us, Salil said ‘Kya choti choti baton pe roti hain’. But that wasn’t fair cos I cried only just a little and it really did hurt.”

Both times she wasn’t complaining or even hurt, she was just puzzled.

Was reading to her from ‘Matilda’ today, she’s unwell. There was this line which went, ‘Newts are amphibians.’ She knowledgeably said, ‘Yes, and tadpoles are Sicilians.’ :D Whaaat? You mean you didn’t know that?!