Lifting the Shield

For a very long time I've been teaching.

I qualified as a TEFL teacher way back in 1995 and have taught lots of different people in the 24 years since. From Italian MPs (hardly ever turned up) to summer camps in London, I've had a wealth of experience in the world of English as a Foreign Language.

Basically it’s a mixed bag as the pay is good and I get long holidays but parts of the job can be dull and as I work in Italy the red tape and bureaucracy are like something from that Terry Gilliam movie Brazil.

However, one thing I love about teaching is that I get to work with kids. I’ve always liked children and find teaching them to be rewarding (if sometimes frustrating) and there is something magical about inspiring little ones to learn, something I don’t feel when I teach adults. I also qualified in 2016 to teach children and teenagers Krav Maga when I flew to Israel to spend 5 days doing the KMG Kids Instructor Course.

Last year in May my Wednesday Children 2 class had finished and, after the final lesson, I gave all the kids a little gift and a note wishing them well. In the corridor outside the mothers were there to collect their offspring and Virginia's mum said in Italian “Are you going to give Lance a hug?” and when she pulled away I could see Virginia was crying. I still managed to retain my resolve until 7 year old Alberto then came up and hugged me, bawling his eyes out. I cracked, started to cry, which then set off Alberto's mother, plus one or two of the other mothers. I later got a message from Virginia's mother on Facebook to say “My daughter cried all the way home in the car. Thank you for what you did with our children”.

Even remembering this event makes me feel emotional. However...

I always had a little thing called distance.

As much as I loved working with the kids and as sad as it was to see them on that final day, throughout the 24 years I’ve been teaching on and off, there was rarely if ever any emotional connection. They were lovely to teach and I’m still in touch with people in their twenties that I taught when they were 6 or 7. But above all they were simply a nice way to make a living. They came and then went and I got sad, started over and the cycle commenced anew. On summer camps, in private lessons and at schools, I always loved teaching the children but knew that it would one day be over and they would move on. They, after all, were not my children. They were someone else’s and I always had that buffer of knowing that as much as I liked them, I was never going to get too close to them because they would leave my lessons and grow up and maybe we’d meet one day but it was no big deal if we didn’t.

And finally today I realised why this cycle was not only something that paid me a living wage but was also something that kept me safe.

This afternoon I taught an 8 year old named Giulia who normally has lessons along with two of her pals but the other two were either busy or ill. We had a nice 90 minutes learning the subtleties of money, the usage of “how much?” and days of the week. She is a very clever and sweet little girl and as usual, after nearly 25 years doing this, I was going through the routines, part of my mind wondering what I was going to have for dinner later and if I should buy a new inner tube for my bicycle when Giulia made me laugh. We were checking her school homework (much to her annoyance but at her mother’s insistence) and there was a list of foods liked or disliked by the fictional Mary and Bob. She had to write “He does like...” or “She doesn’t like...” depending if there was a tick or a cross next to the food item. It turned out that Mary didn’t like strawberries and Giulia said indignantly in Italian “Who doesn’t like strawberries?! That’s crazy! She’s mad”. I laughed at this and then really cracked up when Giulia added, again in Italian “I hate my school homework, it’s the most boring thing in the whole universe!”

Thing is, I could hear my own laughter and it was genuine and from my belly, not something I simply did to signify approval or as a conversational segue. I realised then that I really liked the lesson and that Giulia was a real pleasure to teach, not simply a way to make 30 Euros on a Saturday. After the lesson finished I spoke to her mother, got Giulia to repeat some of what she’d learned that day (always goes down a treat that one) and said to Giulia “I like teaching you, the time goes very quickly, with other students I’m sometimes looking at my watch hoping it’s going to end”. She seemed pleased at this bit of news, and her mother smiled and said that they both enjoyed me teaching Giulia.

Now...

After so long teaching it shouldn’t really be 24 years before I was able to form an educational bond with a student. But as stated above, I was in a position where there was a minimum of hurt involved. The students came, they went, they grew up. They weren’t my children so I had no real emotional fallout from them leaving my life beyond a slight sadness on the last lesson. And I realised today that this comforting cycle of being around kids but not having them get too close is because I am basically shit scared of having children of my own.

I’ve never had kids and never sustained a relationship with a woman for longer than about 18 months. My childhood was miserable and I was lonely and felt outcast from about age 9 (with minor and major incidents shaping my outlook on life from about age 4 onwards). I always thought my greatest fear was getting close to other people but my single greatest fear and something that finally dawned on me today, is bringing children into the world and being responsible for them.

Sitting at the lounge table today with Giulia and laughing at her sense of humour, I felt for the first time that I can remember, totally at ease and utterly happy to be there. I was, have been and still am, utterly terrified of having a son or daughter because I couldn’t bear to see them suffer. It was never a conscious decision to avoid having kids, it was simply a defence mechanism of my psyche to avoid bringing more pain into my life. If you don’t do something, then you can’t get bothered by a result that will never happen. To see on an ounce of pain on the face of a child I’d helped create would, I imagined, have caused me pain that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I have spent most of my life lonely and wandering aimlessly to avoid permanent human contact. However, a very fundamental part of me wanted badly to have children so my life created a substitute. Working with children in a way where I got to bring positivity to their lives but without the emotional commitment that comes with parenthood.

Having been helpless to prevent what happened to me as I grew up and being told repeatedly by various people that all the bad in my life was something I either deserved or had brought upon myself, I did not want to bring others into that cycle of pain. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that nobody who hurt me has ever accepted responsibility for what they did. The result is that my subconscious mind blocked me from creating a new generation by making me fear, beyond all other fears, the consequences of creating new life.

The shield I held up to the world so very long ago was today moved aside just a little by a funny, sweet natured little girl who made me realise, finally that maybe it is OK to be a father because the tiny piece of joy that Giulia brought to me for a few seconds felt like nothing I’d known before. I've laughed fit to bust at stuff kids have done in the past but I'd never done it with my guard down. I don’t believe it was because it was her, it was simply that my soul and my energy have now shifted to make me appreciate more the basic wonders of this world. I don’t spend so long now, hating my past and wanting revenge. I think I’ve reached something like equilibrium.

I was so scared of having children that I made myself into a shielded man that could never make the connection necessary to deliberately create new life.

Now maybe I can.