ALSphere Foundation
It was winter, when the chilling cold was so hard for everyone to bear especially small children getting up early for school. The school bus of my brother, used to leave his stop by 5:45 sharp, so he had to rush or else he would miss the bus. So for a grade 1 student, getting up early and that too in the extreme cold climate was a challenge.
Shlok, my brother reached school and attended the assembly. The first period was Math, the subject he loves the most. Second period was English and it was his class teacher’s subject. Half of the period went in doing the classwork which he did interestedly. Then he noticed that the teacher was permitting the students to use the restroom. Shlok went to his class teacher seeking her permission for the restroom. He asked, “Teacher, may you go to the toilet?” The teacher was correcting the notebooks and she looked at Shlok, astonished. She replied “No, Shlok, I don’t want to go to the toilet.” He asked again for the permission by pleading to his class teacher, “Teacher, may you go to the toilet please?” She emphasised by saying, “No, Shlok!” He was puzzled that teacher has permitted all other students to use the restroom but not him. His confused expressions on his desperate face made her ask the most awaited question, “Shlok , do you want to go to the toilet?” To this Shlok immediately replied, “Yes, teacher urgently!”
When he came back to his class, the teacher called him and told, “Shlok, when you ask permission for yourself, you should use ‘I’ not ‘you’.” He shyly smiled, scratched the back of his head abashedly and moved back to his seat.
