'What is the inflammation on your skin?' asked my student, innocently. 'Mum is worried.'
How nice of your mother, I thought, to ask me directly. She was sitting in the next room watching television.
Most weeks, when I come to teach my young lad and his sister, Mum is in the sitting room, watching television, or downstairs in the office with her husband, working.
'It's an allergy which I have had since birth, and which flares up in hot weather. You can't catch it,' I said.
It runs in my family, and is passed on through the genes, I explained.
'Here...you won't get it.'
I rubbed a patch of inflamed skin, and pretended to reach out for the boy's bare arm. He looked shocked, but did not recoil.
'Just joking. I would not do anything to make you pick up my skin ailment. Please tell your mother that I am quite safe,' I assured him.
'Okay,' Waen said, passing me a bottle of milk.
He invited me to take a slurp.
After starting the new school term, both children came down with a cold, which they caught from their classmates. Thankfully, I was spared that particular infection.
I declined his kind offer that I share his drink. You never know what a foreigner might be carrying after all.
Hey, I got that too! And I am no farang :)
ReplyDeleteIt's just natural.. when the body heats up, I look like a polka dot dress. Spots everywhere. Only way to cool down is to down lots lots of ice water and wherever possible, with airconditioning on.
It can get embarassing sometimes, or people look at you one kind, but I've learn to get used to it..
And only I have it, no one else in my family, or extended family has it either. :)