MY HEART BEAT
****EPISODE 3****
A for apple, B for ball, C for cat….” The children in Femi’s nursery 2 class chanted in excitement. She used her rod to point at the objects while the children recited. Her class wasn’t very big, she had only 9 children in her class, 3 girls and 6 boys. The boys were mostly chanting except Christopher, who was kneeling in the corner for pulling on Imelda’s hair.
Imelda was a pretty, quiet 4 year old with soulful eyes and Christopher had taken to bullying her in the past few weeks. Personally, she thought he had a crush on her and like most boys his age, he was acting out. Whatever his reasons though, she couldn’t let it continue especially when Imelda’s eyes were still red and tears threatened to spill out at any minute.
Of the girls, Lanke was the only one reciting as Imelda was still struggling to recover. Lanke was her best student, dark skinned and brilliant, Lanke excelled at everything and for a five year old, she was extremely self-assured and in total control, sometimes Femi felt Lanke was a very old woman in a very young body.
The last girl, Amanda was a different kettle of fish. She had joined her class at the beginning of the previous term and so far she hadn’t done well or interacted properly with the rest of the class. Femi had tried talking to her and realised Amanda responded well when she spoke to her but retreated into her shell when she had to do anything to do with her classmates or others.
This wouldn’t have bothered Femi as much if she was doing well in her school work, but she wasn’t and Femi was at a loss as to what to do about her. She had already decided however that she would look at Amanda’s result this term and then write a letter to the school’s Proprietress if her results showed she hadn’t made any headway.
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Poor darling, she thought to herself. She loved children a lot, in fact, she had always thought that at 25, she would be married with at least 2 children of her own. She was 27 now and still no child or marriage for that matter.
When she had moved to her Uncle’s house, she had made pocket money by babysitting for several children in the neighbourhood. She remembered the joy with which the children had run to her calling her Aunty Femi. She figured early she wanted to work with children but she had assumed she would be a paediatrician or child psychologist. She hadn’t had the brains for either and now, she was doing something equally fulfilling, she was teaching and moulding children.
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