Saturday, March 28, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.539
I was walking beside the math teacher on whom I had had a crush, on the
day of a school excursion when I was a sophomore at high school. He
asked me which university I was applying to. When he heard my answer, he
asked me again, “Do you think you can jump across this paddy field to
the other side?” The paddy along the path was over thirty feet in width
and I dismissed it as absolutely impossible. “That’s exactly what you’re
trying to do for the university,” he said. I resented as I thought he
would encourage me since I had gotten full marks in almost every math
test. But he was right. I eventually failed all the universities I
applied to and my dream to work as a super businesswoman at the leading
company was shattered. I lost confidence in myself, lost sense of
purpose in my life, and ended up being a freshman in the women’s college
that belonged to the same school I attended when I was in junior high
and high school. The entrance examination of that college was the only
one I passed although I hated to go there and took the exam for my
worst-case scenario. Students from the same high school were entitled to
get in the college without entrance exam if they didn’t apply to other
universities and colleges. While I endured three years of studying for a
different university, my classmates just had been having fun, and I
settled in the same college as them who didn’t have to take the exam. I
was humiliated every day when they spotted me at the campus and asked
me, “What are you doing here?” or said, “I thought you were going to the
better school!” Everyone in the college including faculty seemed dumb
to me in those miserable days. Even the slip-on sandals that the
president would neatly leave in front of her office door made me furious
and I kicked them away to the hallway with all my force. One day I was
called into the school office. The staff told me to see a psychiatrist
who was temporarily assigned to the college. I had no idea why I needed
to see a psychiatrist. I entered her small office and she welcomed me
with her warm smile. She just kept saying to me, “It’s all right.
Everything is all right. You don’t have to worry anything. It’s all
right.” That was all she said. Only two freshmen including me were
called in and I asked the other girl what it was all about when I bumped
into her. She guessed that had to do with a survey the college had
conducted for all freshmen. She suggested that we were called in because
we checked yes on a question whether we ever want to commit suicide. I
was astonished at the fact that other students except two of us had
never felt like killing themselves up until in their late teens. I
strongly felt they were the ones who needed to see a psychiatrist, not
us. I was slowly, gradually coming to grips with who I was. I wasn’t
made for a businesswoman to begin with. Being a musician seemed much
more like myself…
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.538
In the time of my school days, women in Japan were mostly housewives. It
was considered that women quit working when they get married. One of my
mother’s old female classmates stayed single and had an administrative
job at IBM in Tokyo, which was so rare at that time. To me, continuing
to work after marriage was more natural than being a housewife since my
mother went to work every day. Only, I didn’t want to be like her who
worked as a farmer in a country. I would rather have become a
sophisticated businesswoman like her old classmate at IBM. It was
necessary to graduate from the first-class university to be hired at a
large famous company like IBM. I started to study for the university’s
entrance examination when I was a freshman at high school. My daily life
had inevitably changed. I had gradually distanced myself from my cool
friends with whom I used to hang out all the time, and spent much time
with my new would-be-a-doctor friend. She introduced me the whole new
world. She was sincere, courteous and refined, and respected her parents
who were both doctors. My study days were troublesome. Because I tended
to listen to music instead of studying in my room at home, I studied at
the library as much as possible. There, I spent the time solving math
problems that I loved to do so much. Although Japan used to have a
stupid system for the university entrance exam that the high average
mark of all the seven subjects decided the school, I didn’t feel like
studying other six subjects beside mathematics. I just studied math day
and night, even floating a sheet of a problem in a plastic bag in the
tub while I was taking a bath. I knew I needed to study other than math,
but I didn’t realize my biggest weakness back then – I can’t do
anything I don’t like. As the exam drew near, pressure had begun to
seize me. I pulled out the plug of my stereo not to listen to records
and stuck the plug to the wall with a note of ‘Patience!’ A small thing
provoked my fury toward my sister with no reason one evening, and I
found myself gripping her by the throat. I came to myself when I
realized I was choking her. She told my father that I tried to kill her
and he suggested to me that I should see a psychiatrist. Every practice
examination showed I wouldn’t pass the university I was applying to, but
I relied on my IQ heavily. I believed that if my brain ran at full
blast on the very day of exam, my high IQ would wring out a high score
by recalling what I didn’t even remember. Otherwise, it would be proved
that my high IQ was a worthless, useless, decorative-only nothing
although my whole life had depended on it. I couldn’t possibly accept
that kind of notion. I refused, by any means…
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