Ever since my brothers and I were young, Mother would sign us up for a variety of tutoring services. We went to an education center, which was similar to Kumon, where they would give you homework to work on. So in addition to the homework from school, my brothers and I had to work the education center’s math and reading comprehension homework. As we got older, we stopped going to the center to focus solely on schoolwork.

In order to help us with our schoolwork, Mother hired tutors for specific subjects. We had a tutor for English and French, another for chemistry and math, and another for biology and physics. In high school, Mother hired an additional tutor as the math became too advanced for the tutor we already had. Even though I was receiving a perfect score in math class, Mother would still push me to use the tutor, which was useless as I just ended up doing extra work in concepts that I have already mastered.

One time, Mother drove me to a tutoring session at a learning center. As I was already late, she was rushing and cut off a driver, in order to get into the entrance of the building’s parking lot. The car who she cut off followed us into the parking lot, drove up to the parking space beside us and began to curse at me. It was spring, so the car’s window were down. I could hear him clearly.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Cutting me off like that?” he yelled. He must have been dumb with anger as all cars in Canada had their driver in the left seat.

“I’m not the driver,” I told him, my voice shaking. Being the non-confrontational, sheltered child that I was, I was absolutely scared at how angry and crass he was acting.

He asked, “Who is then?” I pointed to my mother. Like did he really have to ask who the driver was? Of course, it was going to be the person sitting next the passenger.

“What’s going on?” Mother asked me.

I replied, “The driver you cut off is angry.”

“I’ll deal with it. Go inside,” she told me. We both left the car. She came around to the other side of the car and acknowledged him. I was terrified that he was going to attack my mother and stayed to make sure that he didn’t.

He began to yell at her furiously, “Bitch! Why the fuck did you cut me off? Why the fuck were you in such a hurry?”

“I’m sorry. I had to drive my son to his tutoring. He was already late,” she replied calmly, expressing guilt for cutting him off.

He then looked at me, probably saw how scared I was, and then calmly replied to her, “He’s going to be more late as he’s just standing there.”

Mother looked back and reassured me, “Everything is okay. Just go in.”

He yelled, “Do you know what you are? You are a cunt!” He then drove off and I went into the learning center. I was extremely impressed with how Mother handled the situation. If it was me, I would have been cowering in fear. Maybe even crying to be honest. The fact that Mother was willing to make someone angry and possibly cause expensive damage to both her car and the car behind us just so that I can go to my tutoring session is sad. It does show how devoted she is though and how much value she placed on my education. She wanted the best for me and believed that tutoring would help me get the grades, in order to be enrolled in a good university program, in order to get a good job.