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Who sets the rules? |
| Our first apartment had a
kitchen and a living room. In the evening, me and my younger brother
had to go to bed at 7 pm. When I was 3 or 4 years old, my parents
explained to me that I was now old enough to stay up a little longer.
For an additional half an hour, I was allowed to stay with them in the
kitchen, while the youngest member of the family still had to retire to
the living room at the usual time. |
| From
a practical point of view, this gain in waking activity didn't go with
any gain in comfort. We three 'big ones' had to feel at ease with about
seven squaremeter free space, doing whatever we liked to do, my parents
on less then cosy stools listening to the radio, while I proudly moved
my favorite car to and fro on the tidy kitchen floor. I was grown up
now. |
| A
few years later, we had moved to a little house of our own at the green
outskirts of the city. During the first years, our little road didn't
even have a solid surface. We were allowed to move unsupervised within
certain bounderies. A first outpost was the grocery store two corners
around. From there, we could see the tram passing by, at the end of a
bigger road we were not allowed to walk alone. |
| Still
later, we had to go to school along this road, at the beginning under
parental custody, but very soon all alone. For the first time, we came
into routine contact with rules of other sources. In my 4th year of
elementary school, our class took the tram and the underground to join
classes of other schools for a choir rehearsal. On the way back, I was
for the first time on my own to use public transport. |
| The first section in the
underground was no problem. Unfortunately, nobody had told me that I
could continue with the same ticket also in the tram. What should I do?
I had no money on me, still I had two legs to walk. All I had to do was
to follow the rails. After the first station, the track diverged into
two directions. I couldn't remember, which was the right one, but I
knew the tram's number. I waited for my number to come and followed. |
| The
more complex the circumstances, the less detailed came in the parental
instructions. In
the 2nd year of secondary school, the building needed some renovation.
Our class was transferred for some time to a primary school at some
distance. The first day, my father showed me the way. We had to walk
for a while. To bridge the time, he asked me how I actually felt in my
class community. |
| I did not expect such a
question. He added, I should name eventual villains who bullied me, he
would beat them up. He laughed while making this promise, so I realized
that he was not serious. I could have told him one or the other story,
but I didn't. He was himself a teacher and knew, what he was talking
about. I had the feeling that this was my personal affair I had to deal
with on my own. Of course I did have fights, and I lost most of them. |
| When it
comes to growing up, we slowly shift from parental rules to our own
ones, supplemented with good hints from various sources. Our first
class leader in secondary school was also our teacher in physical
exercise. He told us a trick, how we could increase walking speed: by
stiffening the toes. He also advised us to place two peaces of toilet
paper before sitting down at the locus. I still follow both ideas. |
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