A Story

Whew! That was exhausting! I spent 5 days at work. How will I ever steel myself for another 2 years at work, beginning in August?

Alex asked me to tell a story: "You know," he said, "one of those meaning-of-life stories." So, here goes:

Many people ask me why my boys do not attend an international school. The reasons are many, mostly involving language and their mother, in short: mother-tongue issues. But there is something else: when Thun comes home from school, he immediately goes to the balcony and washes the dishes. Then he mops the floor. He sees this as normal and he never complains. If he attended an international school, he would lose this value which I think important. I told this to my friend and he exclaimed:

Of course, even I had to do that in the Army. We had to clean the toilets. We cleaned the toilets with brushes, trying to keep a safe distance. Then we had a new recruit: a real country bumpkin from the South. So we told him to clean the toilets. Amazingly, he did it with his hands, his bare hands! We were shocked as we watched him scrape the nasty parts with his fingernails. When he was finished the sergeant came. The sergeant inspected the toilets and then said: "In my 20 years in the Army, I have never seen such clean toilets!"

From then, we also cleaned the toilets in the manual style. But, we used rubber gloves, you know, the long rubber gloves that go up to your elbow.