Tárogató, 1949-1950 (12. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1949-10-01 / 4. szám
14 TÁROGATÓ him. “You’re early. Oh, what happened to your face? It’s bleeding.” “I was just playing,” Wilbur said, not wanting to be a tattletale. “Come on into our room and I’ll put something on it,” the teacher offered. “Now, tell me all about it.” Wilbur paused, then blurted out the story of how the boys in Highland school had nicknamed him Wee Willie the day he entered two weeks before. “They’ve been mean to me ever since,” he said hotly. “I’m going to get even, though. I’ll make them sorry they picked on me because I’m small for my age!” “I doubt if it would help to try to get even that way,” Miss Knight said. “But I know how you feel. The children teased me when I was your age. Only it was because I was taller than anyone else in school.” Wilbur’s eyes widened. For the first time he noticed that the teacher was tall, taller even than his father. “The children in my grade called me Clumsy Clara,” Miss Knight continued. “They kept asking how the weather was up there where I lived. It made me so angry that I lay awake nights thinking of ways to get even with them.” “Did you?” Wilbur asked. “Yes, but not in the way you mean. I played tricks, like mixing up overshoes and throwing caps in the waste-basket, and pouring ink on their books, but they kept right on being unkind. Getting even by doing something worse than is done to us does not make boys and girls stop picking on us.” __“Then what does?” “I’ll tell you what worked for me if you will keep it a secret.” “I never talk to the other kids,” Wilbur said. “Well”, Miss Knight sat down on the desk across from Wilbur’s seat. “My mother told me that the way to make the children stop teasing me was to be so nice they would forget I was tall and awkward. And being good to them would make them feel ashamed of themselves.” Miss Knight looked thoughtfully out the window. “Do you go to Sunday School?” “Of course,” Wilbur answered. “Well, remember the Sermon on the Mount? Jesus said, ‘Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also?’ “Does this mean I should go out and tell the kid to throw a stone to cut my other cheek?” Wilbur asked in amazement. “Not exactly,” Miss Knight laughed. “I think it means that we should learn to forgive those who wrong us. And instead of trying to get even, treat them kindly.” “But—,” Wilbur began to protest. “I know it isn’t easy,” Miss Knight said. “I found it very hard to be pleasant to the children who teased me. But when I stopped being angry all the time I discovered that there was something about each one that I liked.” “It isn’t so bad for a girl to be too tall as for a boy to be too short,” Wilbur declared. “Perhaps not. But God has a reason for making some of us different. Perhaps some day being small will help you do something the larger boys could never do. Why, because I was tall, I was the only child in the neighbourhood who could get a frightened kitten out of a tree.” Wilbur thought a great deal about what Miss Knight told him. It was hard to believe that being small could ever help him. But he would try being nice to the boys and see what happened. The next day Wilbur took a bag of his mother’s ginger cookies to share with the boys at recess. “Give me those cookies!” Butch ordered fiercely. “Babies like you aren’t allowed here. Beat it before I punch your nose in!” Wilbur longed to fight for his rights, but he knew it would be useless to attack a boy as big as Butch. He ran around the corner of the school-house. “Wee Willie is a coward!” the boys shouted after him. Wilbur made his way to the front of the building where the school janitor was talking to another man. “That warm wind last night sofened the ice on the pond so it isn’t safe for skating,” the janitor was saying. “No one should skate there until we get another freeze.” After school Wilbur saw Butch and his buddy, Martin, walking toward the pond with their skates. Wilbur watched, thinking how glad he would be if Butch
