[the art of giving] the art of receiving

When I was teaching decades ago in Australia, our year level went on a "Weekaway Camp" and there was a small lake and on the lake were kids in canoes. I sat on the bank, canoe at the ready and supervised the thing.

There was a boy, a bit of a rough nut, very awkward with emotions and he had his eye on the Greek goddess Alexandra but despite all his bravado and hard man status, he couldn't bring himself to approach her.

Then I watched him go to a clump of bushes and rip off one of the branches with yellow flowers on it. I was about to have a go at him when he started acting strangely, making straight for the canoe and holding the bit of branch as if there were no tomorrow, taking the paddle in one hand and paddling over to the island.

Then I tumbled to it - the GG and other girl were there - it was going to be interesting. He paddled right up against her canoe and knocked it so she sat down heavily and then he just thrust the branch into her hands without ceremony and looked down.

The next bit mortified me.

She took every flower off the branch one by one and threw them in the water, then threw the branch after it and stared at him. He simply didn't know how to respond. He turned and paddled away and was quiet for the evening.

I asked her later why she'd done that and in a guttural voice, she said: "Dyou think I want anything from him?"

I said I hadn't asked that - I wanted to know why she'd done the pulling off of the flowers and so on and then the grand dramatic flourish at the end. But the question produced no result and I learnt a lesson from that when our main sportsman waited for me on the landing one day and pushed a flower into my hand before lessons, turned on his heel and went back in the room.

I still haven't got over that one.

Near Christmas, one of my boys said to me to "wait there" and then went off and got his mum and her friend who'd been distributing Paterson's cakes to all the staff, took one from the stack in her arms and said: "Here's yours."

I still haven't got over that one either.