Chapter 16 a mouse

At the Sunday breakfast table, mum in her dressing gown drinks coffee and stares at the newspaper spread out on the table. "T-T-M-" An An huddled beside her mother, pointing to the words on the newspaper, "De-Mon-S-S-" "You're blocking me, An An!" Mom tried to push An An away. "Mom," An An's eyes never left the word pressed by her finger, "Mom, what is De-Mon-S-T-T-Tra-bear?" "Oh!" "Demonstration," Mom said, "is a demonstration." "Can you let me read the newspaper in peace?" "Ka-ka-pi-tututu-la-" An'an didn't hear it at all, his fingers and eyes moved to another piece, "Kapitula-pull bear-what is it?"

"Ka-pi-tu-la-tion," said Ma, "means surrender." "Brother-brother-bandit-" Before he finished reading, his mother had already taken the newspaper away and hid in the toilet. This is An'an's latest game since she started primary school in August this year.Sitting on the dining table, his eyes fixed on the juice box on the table, "Ou-run-jing-sha-fu-te-ah, orange juice." Stuttering, very correct , a syllable-by-syllable pronunciation.Walking on the road, he looked at the huge bus, "Gu-te-touch-root-ah-" he suddenly realized and was pleasantly surprised: "Good morning!" There was a visitor at home, and he stared at it urgently. Looking at the chest of the guest, with straight eyes, he said to himself:

"Block-must-be-" The guest turned and he slipped ahead. "Du-must-be-bean-bean-fu-" Hahahahaha, he laughed, rolling on the ground, "You must be tofu, you are an idiot! You must be tofu..." That kind of happiness is indeed like a blind man suddenly seeing the world with open eyes. Mother looked at the little boy rolling on the ground like a donkey, and suddenly thought, perhaps it is right not to teach literacy in kindergartens, so why worry?Childhood is so short, so precious.Now, 20 children start from ABCD together, and there are probably two or three children who are the first to recognize the words, but they sit in the classroom in a daze.The other little friends chattered excitedly to discover the world of words.

There was a statistic in The Economist that brightened my mother's eyes.How much time do first graders spend each week on homework?United States: 1.8 hours.Japan: 3.7 hours.Taiwan: eight hours. "My God!" Mom cried secretly.She began to count the time for An An to do her homework.There are flowers everywhere, a big boxy schoolbag, usually only a notebook and a box of pens in it.The textbooks are all left in the school, "It's too heavy to carry back, the teacher said." The daily homework is a piece of paper with four lines of characters written on it, and one sheet is written with a thick crayon. Each letter is as big as a pebble. Big, that is to say, if it is written on one side, if it is to write the word "Donkey ESEL", the total of four lines is only 16 characters.

An An can finish writing in thirty minutes.If he twists and turns on the chair, kicks the table, kicks the chair, and draws a car and two dogs in his notebook; if he suddenly starts playing with pencils, folding airplanes, and counting chestnuts in the woods, If you "wander your mind", the time will of course be longer.But the time he really spends on homework is no more than 30 minutes a day, that is to say, five days a week, a total of 150 minutes, or 2.5 hours, a little more than in the United States, but you have to know , American children usually finish class at 3:00 in the afternoon, but An An leaves school at 11:30 in the morning every day.

Then it's time to play by yourself.Play, play, play.Every year when I return to Taiwan, my mother has to apply for visas for An An and Fei Fei to the Taiwan Representative Office in Frankfurt.There is always a column on the application form, asking what is the applicant's occupation?Mom politely filled in "play and play".What is the purpose of the applicant's visit to Taiwan? "Play around".If there is a column asking about the applicant's expertise, my mother must also fill in "play and play". Do seven-year-olds in Taiwan spend eight hours doing homework?My mother has amnesia and can't remember much about her childhood.The only thing that impressed me was how unwilling I was to do my homework.Lying for homework is the first step in her turning bad.She always blushed and lowered her head and whispered, "I forgot my homework at home", but she didn't know that the same lie would become invalid many times. Teacher Wang Youwu asked her to leave the classroom on the spot and go home to pick it up.

She cried all the way home, passed a small bridge, and under the bridge a small river bent, swimming a few milk-yellow ducks.She wondered if she would jump off and drown herself so she wouldn't have to do her homework.When she got home, she knelt on the couch and began to pray, presumably asking God to erase the entire day the way a teacher erases words on a blackboard with a chalk eraser.She cried herself to sleep on the sofa until dark. After school at 11:30, An An walked home.In the first few months, my mother always followed behind, like a detective, monitoring whether he stopped at every intersection to see the cars on both sides, whether he was walking within the range of the sidewalk... as soon as he got home, he started to do his homework .

"How many mice did you get in yesterday's homework?" Next to the desk is a chair for mom. "One." An An opened the notebook.Yesterday's handwriting was crooked, and there was a blue mouse stamp in the corner.Of course it's only worth a mouse; you were writing and playing with that Donald Duck eraser yesterday, weren't you?Can you concentrate a little bit?Only do one thing at a time, and after finishing one thing, do another, understand?Can it be done?Ok?Put that comic off and read it later, please, did you hear that?I count to three and you don't move...

An An finally finished writing four lines of big characters and handed them to her mother.Red, red, blue and blue are full of colors.Mom glanced at it and said, "This last line is not very well written. The N is beyond the grid." Ann pursed her lips. "How about this!" Mom continued, "How about taking another blank piece of paper and just filling in this line? That's how you get three mice." An An's fair face began to flush. Mom pulled out a piece of paper from the drawer, "Come on, let me help you draw the line, it's very simple, just one line—"

"Why?" An An couldn't bear it anymore, looked at her mother angrily, slid down from the chair, and shouted, "Why do I have to write another line? You always want me to write well and beautifully, I just A kid, I can't write as well as you—" Tears welled up in his eyes, and he growled, "You always want me to have two mice and three mice, so good, so good, and I want a mouse sometimes - and I have a right to a mouse, too. Just a mouse..." Mom was taken aback by his outburst and sat there speechless for a long time. Both were silent. After a while, my mother put down the paper in her hand, wiped An An's tears with the back of her hand, sighed, and said:

"Okay! Just a mouse. Go and play!" An An silently packed her things, buttoned her schoolbag, and walked to the door.When I got to the door, I turned around and said to my mother who was still in a daze: "Sometimes I can take three mice." He went out. "Sometimes."