School-family, talks of the absurd – CorrieredelMezzogiorno.it

– Cardamone, what are you doing, are you hiding?

– I’m taking a breath, Art. Today is not the day…

– Cardamone, again this year don’t you have the grades for the quarter?

– Vabb, I have some votes…

– Again this year…and I told you to get organized in time! They only come here for grades and what do you do? The first three months you forget the checks! Oh, but it takes talent, it takes!

Bow your head. He looks like a big fat baby about to cry. – And you even let me play the part of the Normative Parent, look at me!

From the expression I understand that he does not mean. -Oh, transactional analysis, Eric Berne’s theory, Cardamo’!…- Nothing. Cardamone if you don’t talk about the rate of profit and the reproduction of capital, he becomes illiterate. He hardly noticed that Freud passed, some time ago.

– Cardam, for Berne we have ego states, internal parts, don’t we?

He nods, as happens to any student when he doesn’t understand and just wants to minimize the damage.

– So, within us we have a Normative Parent, who gives the rules and punishments, and a Nurturing Parent, who takes care of and encourages…these are two functions, aren’t they?

– Interesting…- says Pinocchio.

– And then we have two infantile parts, Cardam, the Adapted Child, who does everything to please the others, and the Free Child, who plays and moves freely…and then there is the Adult, only one Adult, not distract you, the one who makes rational choices without being influenced by emotions, like the other parts of the ego…

– Eh, Cardam…now for example that you’re not understanding a club and you nod, which internal part are you bringing out?

– Well, one of the two Parents…

– Your sister, Cardamone! If you try to please me you bring out the Adapted Child! And you throw the Normative Parent out of me! The one who gets pissed! Do you see it or not?

Now he looks mortified. Pure regression stuff. And it occurs to me that school is all here. Someone who has clear what to teach and does it in the best way he has, given the time available, but always finds a hitch. For some internal reason in a long and imaginative casuistry there is always a reason why we don’t get on with someone or many. And then we should have the patience to bring out the Welcoming Parent, as Chiara sometimes does with the kids, certainly not with me, and go as a detective in search of the reason. Gathering invisible clues supported by the blind trust that the solution is always there. Just be Sherlock Holmes. Nothing more.

But now I’m in a hurry in the closet with brooms and detergents, I don’t have the patience of the Welcoming Parent, and so I’m reduced to whistling at the Adult. Let him solve the problem.

– Cardamone, let’s do this. I’ll leave you my laptop. We have classes in common. The open electronic register. At every interview, you look at my averages and get your bearings. Loose, Cardamone… it’s done…

He smiles. We go out and the first set of parents approaches me. If the three of us each have five internal ego parts, I think, we’re talking fifteen right now. Maybe that’s why there’s a lot of shouting everywhere, I conclude.