Vignettes #39

I've done quite a many different jobs over the years, but the most frequent job was giving private lessons to help kids improve their grades at school. I had been doing this from my early teens on.

One of the many pupils I had was a friend's cousin. She actually wasn't that bad at school, but she was madly ambitious and wanted to have better grades. Although I needed the money I would have rather done without this particular job, because she and her mother, too, were very domineering and asked a lot from me, although they basically stayed friendly. Although I got my hourly pay for visiting and giving lessons, the girl would call up at home and then ask me questions for hours on end. Often I found myself dictating her complete print-ready essays for all likely topics that could come up with a next day's test. I never got paid for those hours.

One day I arrived at their house for the next lesson, I had the girl arguing with her mother and she came into the office with her eyes all red and she was sniffing. I didn't ask her what it was all about, but my friend later told me that their was a big family argument with the girl. She was going to have her 18th birthday soon, and so it was decided as a special meal that they would serve her favourite rabbit!

This fight went on for 2-3 weeks, but the girl lost: as a special gift for her coming of age she was forced to eat her own favourite rabbit...