Every Tuesday, my younger boy will have to stay back in school for his prefects' meeting. As a result , he has to take the LRT to come back and I will pick him from there.
My younger son is very absent minded. No amount of advice, repetitions, nagging, reminder will ever make him 'error' free. He will lose his things ranging from rackets to water tumblers. I've read about his character, it is called 'popular sanguine personality' ( The Extrovert * The Talker * The Optimist).
He is someone that never cares for small details and the way he does a 'normal' thing is often very dramatic. For example, when he comes back and changed into his usual shirt, he will removed his uniform and threw it across the room and ended up in the ceiling fan. It is just him, the last minute boy and to me totally irresponsible. So I thought when he was nominated for prefect, I told him to take up the role so that he may learn to be more responsible. In school, however he behaves well and the teacher will look at me as if something is wrong with me when I tell them he is very 'laid-back' in his work. He is also a natural joker that makes me laugh almost daily.
Back to Tuesday, I saw him coming out from the LRT Station while waiting in the car. Then I noticed he was not carrying his homework bag. He has 2 bags , one back pack and another homework bag to spread the load of his super heavy books. The moment he came into the car, I asked him about his homework bag....and he goes.."Oh Gosh....I left it on the train".
I was so aghast and quickly took him back to the station and asked the counter guy for help. At the same time praying so hard that some kind soul will return his bag. Unfortunately, he told me the train has gone back to KL. Anyway, he asked for details about the bag and made calls to the train and all the respective stations to look out for the 'bag'.
After waiting for quite awhile, he asked me to go home since no one has responded of anything found. I left my number with him and went home waiting anxiously for the phone call.
Back home, I had avalance of questions. Suddenly, he told me he wasn't sure if he left the bag in the train. I almost exploded, if not in the train , then at the station that he boarded his train? He tried so hard to remember but could not recollect where the bag is.
That night, I gave him a good scolding and told him to fix his own problem. He has to buy the books that he lost with his own money , and redo all those work in the exercise books that went missing as well. ( By the way, he earns quite a tidy sum of money by helping his friends to solve their phone problems...for that I have to salute him!).
The next morning, he told me " Mom, I think I didn't take the bag to the LRT station because I remembered my hand was like this ( showing me his hand position). I think I left it in the prefects' meeting room. A glitter of hope.....
In the afternoon, I went to pick him up from school. After the bell rang, my legs went wobbly and my heart was pounding furiously. What if....it was not there! I saw him from a distance and to my relief, he was holding his homework bag. Phew! Well, you would have thought he has learn his lesson but I can tell you, he will continue to give me heart attack moments.
He really has poor memory and sometimes I wonder if all the head knocks he had when growing up was responsible for his 'memory problem'. He was a very active and clumsy toddler.
Well....life has gone back peaceful until the next episode!!!
