Girl Power: I can sit still
P1,
1960.
I am five years old.
I can sit still and listen.
I will not talk because
the teacher asked us not to.
Us is me too.
This
is not hard to do.
It's
just as easy as standing still
or,
after playtime, marching indoors
quietly
in pairs while holding
your
partner's hand, or
Good Morning, Boys and Girls,
returning
the teacher's greeting
in
unison. And likewise sitting down
on
receiving the invite, as thusly
it
was phrased, for politeness.
So
proceeded the day; politely,
willingly,
orderly, quietly.
Such
discipline needing no effort
for
although I did not know it
this
is what makes me, me.
My
little self, showing an iron will
in
following a template whose end
was
to make me worthy
of
respect in my journey to
being
a lady, the loveliest and
the
truest girl power.
Admittedly, the time frame is short for its application, but one wonders if epigenetic effects are also involved in the apparent constitutional inability of so many contemporary children to sit still and otherwise demonstrate the strong self-control of their recent ancestors. This control being especially true of little girls then, who could apply and project it at a truly formidable level, as I clearly recall.
We refer to 'also involved' as an acknowledgement of the various societal changes in this same time-frame. Powerful though such forces obviously are, they still seem to me to be not sufficient to explain the random, inner chaos that finds first expression in the inability to sit still on instruction.
And repeated instruction.
