In Part 12, Sharlene carefully reviews the company’s status with each of her partners and finds they’re progressing much faster than was estimated. Since she greatly enjoys his touch which results in her high quality emotional recordings, her database of recordings is also growing faster than she expected. Then, a close family member dies which distresses her and she seeks comfort in his arms.
A peek inside:
Angelisa asks, “Great Aunt, do you go into all of this detail with each of the female children who are being presented as women within the culture?”
Sohneetuh snorts in derision then says, “Of course not.”
“Then how come you’re doing it with me?”
“Because you’re interested in knowing, you always want to understand that there’s a reasonable explanation behind our traditions, and someday the knowledge will be important to you. For you to be able to translate our language as fully as possible, you need to understand the culture which developed and uses the language as completely as you’re capable. Not only that, but the more you understand about our roots, the more you’ll be able to help others see the fallacies with the current status quo and maybe help a few people to see the value in our traditional beliefs and encourage them to embrace the traditions.”
“Thank you for explaining.”
“Believe me, it’s truly my pleasure and privilege to teach such a willing student.”
“Mr. G said something similar when he was helping me learn to read.” Angelisa pauses then asks, “Does it make that big of a difference?”
Sohneetuh answers, “If you care about what you’re teaching it does. Pretend you’re going to teach somebody how to ride a horse. You had a choice of students, either Huleeoh or the chickens in the back yard. Which would you choose?”
“Huleeoh, of course.”
“And why is that?”
“He would desperately want to learn while the chickens wouldn’t care or would be upset at having their eating interrupted.”
“That’s the difference.”
“Oh. How do you keep yourself motivated to teach the young?”
“By remembering the few who do want to learn, like yourself, and looking for the next one who might want to learn if you can get them interested.”
“I’m not sure I would have the patience or willingness to keep sharing knowledge with the chickens while waiting for one to show an interest.”
Sohneetuh nods her head as she says, “It can be difficult until you do find the one, and then the enthusiasm of the one seems to make all of the wait worthwhile.”
“It seems like the more I learn, the more jobs will be available to me, but at the same time, more jobs seem inappropriate to who I am, or at least, who I think I am.”
“That could be, but why do you say that?”
Angelisa briefly pauses before she answers, “When Sharlene asked me what kind of job I was interested in going to college for, I said a doctor, a nurse, or a teacher. Since then, I’ve found out that to become a doctor, I’ll have to take a lot of science classes which is the subject I have to work the hardest at. I don’t know what’s required to be a nurse, but I’m guessing it would be a similar level of interaction with strangers as it is to be a waitress and that’s hard for me to deal with. And if being a teacher is dealing with multitudes of chickens hoping to see something more than greed in their beady little eyes, . . . I don’t know.”
“One option to teaching would be to work with the very young who are more likely to be inspired to find that learning is fun or at least interesting before they’re indoctrinated by their peers that fun and learning are incompatible in the same sentence.”
“I suppose, but I don’t have much experience with the very young.”
“Part of the reason for an education is to gain some experience, or at least to gain the background knowledge which will enable you to make use of a later experience. You don’t have to decide now. I’m sure there are a lot of jobs which might be suitable for you that you’ve never even heard of. . . .”
