Mari+Carmen+García

A REAL STORY IN GRAN CANARIA

I was seven, about to turn eight. We lived in Schamann, in a two-story house which had been built by my father. We moved there the year I was born. I remember it with some trepidation, because it was too big and I only lived there with my parents. My sisters no longer lived with us. Sometimes I was scared when I woke in the night hearing the noise of the wind or whatever [other sounds in the night]. The my parents' bedroom was far from mine. When I think of the house mixed feelings invade me: it had a rooftop terrace where I used to skate with that pair of skates that Magi had brought me. I spent there more hours than I can count; nobody knows how many times I fell trying to do the tricks as ice skaters did on TV. On the upper floor, the house had a [office? recreational room?] functional room, where I used to do my homework each day. Thus begins the story ...

My mother sent us to school when we were seven and, by that time. she had taught us to read, write, add and subtract. My school was a three hundred meters from home and m y mother let me go alone. The teacher was an elderly lady and very unattractive. What she liked least was that children who didn't do their homework. If you ever did not do them, she struck to your fingers with a ruler that was hanging behind the door. But she used to mark a lot of homework. Sometimes I had to run and didn't not waste any time to finish them before going to dinner. My mother did not want me to do homework after dinner and before bed.

When looking at the divisions in school, I remember the teacher one day gave us twenty exercises [repeated word]. She did not let us use any calculator. The division was eight or ten digits and divisor was four or five. In my little notebook only two divisions could fit on each page. That evening I couldn’t finish them. I could not do so many divisions. I did not tell my mother and I went to bed. I could not sleep and thought about the ruler of the teacher the next day. That night I dreamed that infinite divisions fell from the roof and came out of the walls and danced on my bed. I only can remember a few hours after my father tucked me up in my bed telling me not to worry, that divisions were already made. He had done them. They told me the next morning that I had woken up at dawn sleepwalking, walked up the stairs, sat in that room and began to make the divisions. I was asleep and my father, very carefully, carried me back to bed. I think since then, I hate doing long divisions and I'm happy since I discovered that calculators make them very quickly. Mª Carmen García González