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One day, while walking to school, Taliya decided a change was in order. She had been sitting in the front of the classroom for several months, dutifully answering Gal’s questions each time none of the other children knew the answer.
But Taliya had grown weary of this process. It was time for some of the other students to begin answering Gal’s many questions.
When Taliya arrived to her classroom, she took a seat in the back, in the desk where she used to sit.
When the girl who had been sitting there arrived and looked quizzically at Taliya, Taliya pointed to the empty desk at the front of the classroom.
“That desk is empty.”
The girl went and sat there.
The girl did not say so, but Taliya suspected she was pleased to once more be at the head of the class, and no longer seated beside Yarden.
Before long, Yarden arrived. And as always, he was under the weather, sniffing and sneezing and wiping his nose.
Taliya immediately used her pencil to draw a line down the middle of the desk, clearly identifying which half was hers and which half was Yarden’s.
Once class began and Gal began teaching, asking questions and then standing before the class in silence, waiting for someone to answer, Taliya knew she had made the correct decision.
She would honor her agreement with God by writing blessings while Gal droned on. Taliya withdrew several textbooks from her backpack, opened them, and stood them up on her desk, creating a wall behind which she could find some privacy.
She produced a notebook with a fresh sheet of paper, and set to work.
God bless Ima, Abba, Yair, Yaron, Sabba, Savta, and the entire family, for more than 120 years. Amen.
Pleased with her work, Taliya set about rewriting it.
She vowed to rewrite it 120 times.
This required a great deal of time and effort, but she soon completed her task. She even counted every single blessing, until she was absolutely certain that she had written it 120 times.
♦♦♦
Soon, it was time for Parents’ Day at school.
Taliya did not care for Parents’ Day.
Each teacher set a special appointment to meet with each student and their parents one evening, in order to discuss academic performance, as well as to get feedback on which areas required improvement. This way, the student could work on these areas before the school year was completed.
Ima was a schoolteacher herself, and was quite busy meeting the parents of her own students. Abba therefore accompanied Taliya to school one evening for the meeting with Gal.
Gal set about explaining that while Taliya’s academic performance was quite good, she had stopped paying attention in class, and rarely participated.
“I’m bored,” Taliya explained. “You need to stimulate my mind. Perhaps you can find some new ways of explaining the material.”
Gal spent several moments straightening the items on her already-immaculate desk and assured Taliya that she would do precisely that.
Taliya and Abba walked home from school, stopping on the way to get ice cream.
Chocolate ice cream.
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