You'll Understand When You Grow Up

My kids are young. My older son is 5 and a half, my younger son is 4. I find myself answering their questions with "you'll understand when you're older" much too often. Like when my younger son asked how he came to be in my belly before he was born. My older son, always acting like the much smarter, much older boy said "well daddy put you in there." Then came - "how did you put me in mommy's belly?" and we had no idea how to answer that so we subtly changed the subject with "look, candy!" They sometimes tend to ask strange questions like "why do birds poop while flying?" or "do fish fart?" and at these times I'm not only shocked by the question but slightly embarrassed when my older son tells me "you're older, you should know" after I've simply shrugged my shoulders with a question mark hovering over my head. So to avoid seeming stupid every time I'm faced with a rather odd question from a rather smart 5-year old, I explain in the most intelligent-sounding way that these things shall be understood in adulthood. 

The reality is that I always HATED when my parents used this famous sentence with me because at any given age as a child I was absolutely sure that I could understand anything and that I needed to know. And I probably could, in a theoretical way. What separates theoretical knowledge from the practical kind is experience and that is definitely something that comes with age. I understood pretty much everything I was learning in college but it wasn't until I actually got hands-on experience in the subject and used the information in specific situations that I gained a complete understanding of the material I had learned. 

I understand now why my parents often told me I'd understand when I grow up. Life teaches you things along the way, and you don't need previous guidance for the lessons you'll eventually have to learn on your own and experience them in your own individual way. It saddens me to think how society and the system will, over time, destroy the innocence of my children and all other children. Their purity will be poisoned by life as they get older. It's good and bad all the same time. 

The School of Life - teaching humans how to become animals since the beginning of time. 

The First Day

It was time to start school again in September. It took me days and days to prepare for that first day in a new school in a new country with new people and hopefully new friends. My mother made sure I had everything necessary to survive the day - a pencil, notebooks, a binder, pretzels, a 2-pound sandwich, milk, juice, crackers, silverware, and of course some home-cooked goulash with mashed potatoes made from scratch instead of powder. My backpack consisted mainly of food since my mother had discovered the unhealthy eating habits of the indigenous American people and did not want me going anywhere near the cafeteria food of the school.

The goulash in my lunchbox could be smelled a mile away, of course, but as the children around me made faces, frowned, and pinched their noses, I knew it wasn't my home-cooked meal causing their nasal distress. It couldn't be! Or could it...?

I quickly learned that I could gain friends and trust from the children around me simply by feeding them pretzels. During my fat teacher's lecture about grammar I got hungry and pulled out my bag of pretzels which my mom had so thoughtfully packed for me. I slowly crunched away at my salty snack and suddenly my little classmates started facing me and finally speaking to me! "Can I have some?" Fortunately my mother packed enough pretzels for like 5 kids, so I had enough to share with my new fans. Until my fat teacher realized what was going on and decided to bring it to an end. She scolded me in front of the whole classroom and made me look like an ass in front of everyone. I have not forgiven her for it to this day. She asked me why I was giving my snack away to others and whether or not I had enough for the whole class. I didn't have enough and she knew it as well as I did. When I plead guilty to not bringing pretzels for the whole class, my fat teacher told me I should not give any to anyone if I don't have enough for everyone. She then made all my freshly made friends return the pretzels they had taken. As I watched all the sour faces bringing their sweaty little hands to my desk and dropping the partially-melted pretzels back into the ziplock bag, I could feel the tears building up in my eyes and slowly trickling down my cheek. The pretzel I had previously placed in my mouth was now drying in my throat and leaving me breathless. Not only had I lost the friends I had just acquired a few minutes ago, but I was also publicly humiliated by the woman who would be teaching me for the next 9 months. At the next recess I managed to regain my friends when they saw me taking out my bag of crackers.

After our short break, we came back to my fat teacher's class. We were instructed to fill out short questionnaires about ourselves, trade our answers with someone else in the class, and then in front of the whole classroom we were to introduce our partner by reading his or her answers out loud. My partner was Tanya. She was a very nice girl but like most children at that age - rotten and evil. Tanya thought my answers were just hilarious! But when I tried to snatch my paper from her to change my answers, she wouldn't let me. So as I sat there listening to the other students' answers, I was preparing myself for the worst. All the children in my class seemed to like pizza, spaghetti, and burgers, while my favorite food was soup! I had soup every night for dinner, and a meal was not complete without soup as an appetizer to warm the tummy. As we stood in front of the classroom and Tanya began introducing me, my knees trembled and I shook all over. Not only did she pronounce my name wrong, but everyone else thought it was hilarious that I had such a stupid name. They laughed and pointed like most rotten children do when someone is different. But the worst came when she started to tell the class what my favorite food was. And as soon as she said SOUP, the entire classroom shook with laughter. The kids thought it was so funny they decided to nickname me Soup-Girl. The humiliation I felt right then was enough to kill me. My classmates made me feel alone, scared, and embarrassed.

I never had any friends at school after that. I would show up every morning, and leave every afternoon, and during that whole eight hour period I wouldn't speak even once. Everyone avoided me, and even my pretzels and crackers weren't bait for them anymore.

Who wrote this?!

I was reading a blog posting this morning and decided to leave a comment. As I'm not a member of that blog, or user, or whatever, I was given the option to leave a comment using my Google account. As I signed in I realized the comment I posted was left by the name "Desperate Housewife." For a minute or so I stared at this wondering why on earth I was named this way. I figured the site gave out random names for unregistered users, but I realized my "name" was click-able. It was a link to a blog. MY blog?! What? 
So this is how, four years later, I realized I made this blog back in 2008, and even posted a couple entries. Wow! I can't even remember when I did this. Think back to 2008 - yeah it makes sense now. My older son was 9 months old at the time and I was fairly bored and unemployed with a lot of diaper-changing and baby-feeding on my hands. That's right! This was 9 months before I had my second child. :) 
Well, for anyone who was read my previous two posts, the situation is completely changed now. In fact, I am no longer a desperate housewife but I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing so I have no idea how to change my "name" here...
However, the title of my blog seems to suit me even better now, four years later, as now I am living the life of an immigrant in the place I had previously referred to as "home" in one of the previous posts. 
Back in 2009, after I had my second child, we moved back to Serbia - my home-country. My desperate housewife days have been over since I found a job working for the US government in my birth country. But I am still living the "life of an immigrant" because as it turned out, I became way too American over the 22 years I lived in the States to be able to completely fit in and adapt to the way of life in the country where I was born but not raised. 
So...I will attempt to now come back to this blog and reactivate myself (as if I was an active blogger before) with a slightly new topic - the life of an immigrant in one's home country. I'm an expat now. I re-emigrated.