Daggers in Things That I'm Grateful For

I wouldn’t say I’m impatient, but people think I’m very impulsive. This is of course far from the truth, it’s just that my patience is invisible to most people. I wait for important things, the things that have value. If I don’t have any investment in it, I won’t wait. I think that’s healthy… but it can become unhealthy.

Take that whole situation with Good. I waited patiently until I ran into him when I first got to Bangkok. I didn’t go around chasing after him, but I waited so long that the situation turned very negative very quickly. My patience registered as inaction and I was left heartbroken because of it.

Patiently waiting is not always seen as a virtue.

I’m seeing the limits of my patience now with my new students. This year in one of my classes, nearly a quarter of my students are special needs or on the spectrum. Thailand doesn’t really recognize ADHD, autism or any of the other things that we focus on in child development in the United States.

But truthfully, I quite love these kids. I see myself in them. My disease meant that I’m viewed, officially, by the government as a developmentally challenged individual. And I know that I might be using incorrect terminology, but that’s because, and this is true (I found the original letter from 1983 in my belongings before leaving for Thailand), the organization that sent the letter to my mother informing her of my disability was called CCS. Now, CCS stands for California Children’s Services… however, in 1983, CCS stood for Crippled Children’s Society. So I am so old that the socially acceptable word to describe people with disabilities was “cripple”.

The thing is, these kids who face the challenge of focusing and battling through their shakes, their hollers, the haze of confusion that their brains unleash on them produce the most consistent, astonishing and accomplished work of any of my students.

One of my students has trouble focusing, he starts suddenly shaking and flapping his arms like someone imitating a flying bird, all the kids laugh. He has no understanding of volume control of his voice and speaks incredibly loud, in Thai, and all the kids laugh because they assume he can’t speak English.

He wrote the most eloquent essay about his pet birds and had the most beautiful penmanship.

It takes me immense amounts of patience, not for them. I enjoy sitting down with them, figuring out what juncture they got lost at and helping them find their way. I love it. It’s why I’m here. But it takes every ounce of patience I have when the kids laugh.

So I just breathe while I stare daggers.