Day 1

[bironic]

What's this?

And thank you to elynittria for the extra icons, so there can be a new one for each day. ♥


1. Elementary School

What I remember of falling through the door is this:

I was eight. It was summer. My mom, my sister and I were playing in the backyard, and at least two of us must have gone in the house for something, because I was coming back outside and the storm door was swinging shut in front of me. I reached out to catch the door before it closed, only my hand hit the glass instead of the metal bar across the middle, and I went straight through it.

I remember reaching out, and then I remember being on my hands and knees on the patio on the other side. I think I was crying. There must have been broken glass all around me.

I remember my mom rushing over and taking me back into the garage, sitting me down, calling our pediatrician. I was staring at a small bleeding cut on the back of my left hand.

I remember riding in the car on the way to the doctor, and my mom saying she was more worried about the cut on my face than the one on my hand. I don't think I'd realized there was one on my face.

I remember lying back on the table at the pediatrician's, the doctor saying we didn't need to go to the emergency room, while my mom and sister watched from the bench in the corner (my mom said years later that it was one of the worst things she'd felt, watching me be stitched up on that table). I remember the sting of the local anesthetic at the top of my nose where the cut was, and the tug of the stitches (four) going in. I don't remember being frightened, only sniffly and maybe a little stunned. I remember the doctor saying there shouldn't be much of a scar. (There is one, but it's pale, a little white slash on the right side of my nose emerging from beneath my glasses nosepad.)

I remember that afterwards, my parents replaced the glass in the storm door with metal screens.
 
 

Comments

[bironic.livejournal.com]

That sounds lovely. A little touch of day-to-day life in a home you'd left. Did you wish for an older brother of your own?

This was the most traumatic injury I had as a kid -- that and chicken pox, which was during the same summer. My sister wasn't so lucky -- she broke her leg when she was two.

I think I'll have to go back and reread my posts from last year, just to make sure I'm not repeating anything

Ha. That's one of the main reasons I put together those index posts -- so I don't post the same memory twice.

[roga.livejournal.com]

Ha. That's one of the main reasons I put together those index posts -- so I don't post the same memory twice.

I did that too last year, and probably will again.

Chicken pox wasn't really traumatic for me - I was very young when I had it, and all I can remember is that it was with my sister, and we were at our grandmother's - being so, it couldn't have been that bad.

Did you wish for an older brother of your own?

I don't think so, not at that point. If anything, I identified with him, because I had a younger sister too, and what he did - putting a wet rag on her forehead and taking her to the hospital - seemed very heroic, and I wanted to take care of my sister heroically too. (Especially when, more often than not I ended up being the one who injured her in the first place.)

Later on, at times, I did wish I'd had an older brother. I think having an older brother kind of breaks you into teenagerhood and adulthood more gently, because you're not the first to talk about or discover things, you have someone's example to follow. I also think that girls with brothers in general have an easier time interacting with boys, especially in younger years, although I say that with no scientific basis. Boys, to me, were a completely foreign world, and the first time I started having guy friends was in the army, where work allows you to get to know people you wouldn't have before.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I also think that girls with brothers in general have an easier time interacting with boys, especially in younger years, although I say that with no scientific basis.

I think having an older brother definitely helped me feel comfortable with boys as human beings (but not, later on, with guys as possible romantic partners). But then again, maybe the fact that I was a total tomboy had a lot to do with that ease of interaction: I always preferred playing with Hot Wheels and rubberband-powered airplanes than with dolls.

Edited to fix a stylistic issue.

[roga.livejournal.com]

I played with both - I loved my Barbies, and I loved my building blocks - and actually, when I think about it, I was perfectly okay playing with the boys in the US. When we returned to Israel, I had to learn what boys were like all over again, and oh ho, they were different all right. A friend of mine had an older brother who was in 6th grade then, and I remember being jealous of her then. Israeli public school boys vs. American Jewish private school boys? Whoo boy, different world altogether.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

Israeli public school boys vs. American Jewish private school boys? Whoo boy, different world altogether.

How so? Or is it just too difficult to nail down the difference in words?

[roga.livejournal.com]

Well, the boys in the US, as far as I can remember, were very, very well-mannered. Classes at my school (SPHDS) were much smaller - maybe 18, 20 kids per class. I remember that there was a poster of the "ten classroom commandments" hung up on the wall, with things like 'raise your hand before speaking' and 'don't interrupt your classmates', and if we broke one of these rules, the teacher would have us stand up and read the rule we broke allowed. If you behaved really badly (like, interrupt three times), your name would get written on a small box in the corner of the blackboard, and nobody wanted that. If we behaved well, we'd get gold stars, or colorful stickers. It was all very innocent and friendly, boys and girls, with no real discipline problems I can point at. There was a big playground, with lots of equipment and possibilities for sports activities which boys and girls played together.

So I was used to this very sheltered community, and then I returned to Israel. On my first day in school, the teacher gave us some kind of worksheet, I guess, and stepped out of class for some reason. The moment she was gone, two boys started fighting with one another - physically fighting, which I'd never seen before - rolling on the floor, banging each other against the equipment closet. Nobody really seemed to mind - I got the impression that it was a regular occurrence. This was in 3rd grade. When the teacher came back in, she broke them up angrily, but... nothing other than that. Israeli boys seemed wilder, more violent. And it has a lot to do with the education system, I think: classes had nearly 40 kids. Teachers were (still are) called by their private names, without a formal title, and in general kids give them less respect than what I remember from the US (in the US, we actually loved our teachers; here, as early as fourth grade I remember kids calling them 'stupid').

Israeli boys also had dirtier jokes and dirtier language, compared to our geeky little Jewish school boys. And all of that felt very foreign to me, coming from there. I might have had the same reaction had I switched from my school to a public school in the US (maybe not in Silicon Valley, but anywhere else); in general, the kids in SPHDS were Good Boys.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I might have had the same reaction had I switched from my school to a public school in the US (maybe not in Silicon Valley, but anywhere else); in general, the kids in SPHDS were Good Boys.

I wonder, too, what the difference might have been between a U.S. public school with comparable class sizes and what you found when you went back to school in Israel -- how much was a cultural difference between countries and how much was between public and private school. My dad for the last two years has taught at the worst public school in NY State and it's not unusual for classes to be unmanageably large, for fights to break out (though not usually in the classroom, at least not in his classroom), and for discipline and respect to suffer.

Just musing, since I have no evidence or experience, but I wonder what the effect of compulsory military service is on the way schoolchildren are treated in Israel. Do you think it's a factor in any way? Not coddling, not sheltering, not exactly curtailing aggressive tendencies? That kids there are more connected in some way to the "real" world than they are here? Hm.

[roga.livejournal.com]

I think most of the difference was the public vs private school. Public schools in Israel aren't exactly like in the US - there are no private schools here (if there are, they're incredibly rare), so every school is just 'school', and they don't have the more run-down, violent image I get from TV when American public schools are discussed, even though they're not exactly as shown on TV either. Most of the time, my school in Israel was fine; when we moved from Mevaseret to my current hometown in the fifth grade, though, you could sense the difference between the two elementary schools. Both were public, and had the same number of kids in classes, but the town itself was more upper class, and it reflected on the school as well. There was more money which was collected from parents, it was less ethnically diverse, and it reminded me more of the private school in the US. And still, it never reached the level of ideal innocence SPHDS has. I do think it had to do with the Jewish school's more religious upbringing, with more emphasis on values and common courtesy. It's funny to hear myself say that, considering I am against a lot of things religious in my country, but I do think it played a part in discipline and good behavior in our school in the US.

Okay that was a long ramble, and I apologize for not cutting the paragraph into more parts, but I'm too tired of hearing myself talk to do so now :-)

As for your second question - actually, no, I don't think so at all. Most teachers are women (a far higher percentage than in the US, BTW), so let's say boys (and girls) are raised mostly by their mothers and teachers: they are absolutely coddled all over the place. A mother - not unless she is a ver bad one - wouldn't try to 'toughen' her child because one day he'll be in the army. She'll try to keep him sheltered and coddle him all the way from boot camp and out the other side of his service, three years later. Every generation of parents, at some point, comforts their children by saying that 'by the time you're 18, you won't need to join the army', with a sad kind of hope that maybe it'll come true. (It's a Very Tragic Drama I'm telling you here, but I swear it's true). I think the only kids who'd be specially affected are ones with either fathers or older brothers who were in combat in the army, or had especially bad experiences there, and were maybe influenced by their individual attitudes. But not everyone has relatives in combat, and there's no rule.

There is a lot of military macho-ism in Israeli men in general, but that, I'd say, is something that happens more post-army than before.

[elynittria.livejournal.com]

I might have had the same reaction had I switched from my school to a public school in the US (maybe not in Silicon Valley, but anywhere else)

Hmm. It's possible that it might be a public/private difference (mostly related to class size, perhaps). I went to first grade twice (due to stupid rules regarding admission age)—once in a public school, and once in private (Catholic) school. I wish I could remember more details, but it seems to me in hindsight that the private school had more discipline.

[roga.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that was the main difference. I just wrote more about it one comment up in this thread, but it's winded and rambly, and you're probably better off not reading it. In any case; I agree with you :-)