Chapter 17 Little People

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For Lena, it was a complicated turn of events to enter the world of children education. First, she thought she would become a doctor, as she didn’t have problems with memorizing and understanding even the most difficult subjects. But medicine demanded not only educational effort. It required vocation of spending one’s life helping people and a whole lot of mess. While the helping part was admirable and easy to digest, the other part of the process was a little bit too overwhelming.

To start with, there were these dissecting room classes where they had to examine dead bodies. Fine, when a head cut in half entered the room on a stroller pushed by the lecturer, it was intriguing. But then it was the whole cut in half body, which was to be admired by innocent students, then there were organs, which they had to touch and, holding back their vomit instincts, get to know as much as possible. Then they were witnessing the section of a baby, which was separated into pieces and later on put together again. And then there were these countless hours of classes with her in the middle: anatomy, biology, chemistry, biophysics, laboratory classes and so on.

‘I don’t feel it’, she decided after a half a year ‘I don’t feel that I’m in the place I’m supposed to be.’

After some consideration, guilt-ridden thought process and doubts, she dropped out of the highly coveted place at the Medical University. Penniless, she went to London, slept on the floor of her high-school friend’s dorm room and found a job in a cafe. It didn’t teach her as much as a semester of medical studies, but she learned two important skills. First was a life-long ability to prepare fifty-seven versions of coffee, including honey caffè latte, espresso, macchiato, americano, flat white and dozens other variations of winter warming drinks and summer cooling smoothies and frappes. She also acquired a taste in cafe sandwiches, cakes, and pies, which didn’t add to her culinary skills but developed her cravings. But, most of all, she perfected her English, while she was surrounded by English-speaking people, and, as a matter of fact, she didn’t have any other choice. She had to do something with her life and this something was to become a linguist. She came back with savings in pounds, once again survived the admission process at the University and effortlessly fell into the world of Shakespeare, Dickens, the Royal Family, fish and chips and Harry Potter.

Five years of studies passed quietly and pleasantly, intertwined by weekend relaxation in Cracov. During her first trip (she still didn’t remember the reason why she went there in the first place: be it her need to travel or an invitation by some of her student friends), she met Gabriel Gacek and started her long-time, long-distance relationship. For a couple of years, she divided her time between studies, teaching at various language schools and cultivating her love life.

If you wonder why she devoted her education to minors, you should take into account her up-bringing, as before she left her town for Warsaw, she had been babysitting her stepbrothers and stepsisters for a long long time. When her mother was at work, she had to make them occupied, had to administer their homework and make sure she had some space for herself. Bored children were more dangerous than a grenade deprived of the plug. Bound to explode any minute. These experiences helped her with her work, an occupation which a lot of people found irritating and unbearable. She was prepared for the worst. She survived the most horrible outbursts of anger and misbehavior. She actually made friends with some of the kids, who were closer to her than other teachers, as with the children she was spending time on an everyday basis, while adults she was passing only in the corridor and in the teacher’s room.

And yes, her job had many negative points. Children were loud, they were difficult to keep in discipline, they didn’t listen to their parents and, as a result, they didn’t listen to their teacher. But they were real people of a little size, with their big fears, enormous insecurities, larger than life personalities and digestive problems. Also, with flaws, disabilities, ambitions and a whole lot of parent problems, for a troubled child was definitely trying to cope with some problems at home.

While she was exhausted and sometimes irritated beyond measure, at the end of the day she liked her job. She didn’t have enough ambition to pursue an academic career, she didn’t have any scientific interests, but she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to do this for the rest of her life. Earnings weren’t that great, her personal life deteriorated, and now she found herself in the process of opening a new chapter and she was willing to take everything that life placed before her in an absorptive attitude.

A year before she was sure that she would finish her studies, move to Cracov, settle down with Gabriel Gacek and probably continue teaching English. Now she was bound to stay in Warsaw and from the dorms she moved to the flat of a complete stranger, whom she met at the police station. She was also involved in a criminal investigation of three mysterious disappearances of academic professionals and she was painfully single. The cheated part she couldn’t yet entirely come to terms with. And each day she was looking at her students (ranging from bored, overly excited or uncontrollably furious meter tall fellows) and she had the same feeling as she had years ago as a student of medicine. Somehow she felt that she wasn’t supposed to be in the place she was at that time and something was bound to change.