To be or not to be: the challenge question

Mathew was ten years old when we first met him at a birthday bash. Halfway through the party, the front door opened, the cold  Arctic air rushed in, and someone quietly sneaked out, followed by who, but my eight-year-old son Dan, in his bright orange cap. Alarmed, I too left my unfinished cake  on the counter table, and scooted out. And, there was Mathew already busy displaying his authentic Swiss army knife to my little Dan, who, in turn, looked clearly awed by being  the chosen one. Embedded in a foot of snow, they stood, the older one pulling out every tool and bubbling out its functionality, and the younger one trying to match the former's enthusiasm with a smothering succession of oohs and aahs.

"You are sure, you are allowed to handle this? It's quite dangerous, you know," the horror in my adult voice, as I caught up with them, was palpable. 

"Oh, yes. I got it as a gift from my dad when I was four,"  shedding his usual shyness, Mathew was rather eager to answer.

"What?"

"See, this is a cockscrew, and this, a 6mm screwdriver, and this here is a bottle-openner...and with this one, you can punch a hole..."

The show over, Mathew proudly shoved the prized possession deep inside his pockets. Little did I know that the show, in fact, had just begun. As we walked through the backyard woods, my feet, through the suede boots, and alpaca wool socks were beginning to hurt with the cold, and the wind stung my face. "Let's go in and play with the Transformers," I suggested. But, the obvious desperation in my voice fell on deaf years, as Mathew stopped for the umpteenth time, to break a twig from a black spruce, or pick up a nice piece of kindling jutting out of the snow. When he thought he had had enough of foraging, he pulled out the shiny red knife and began to whittle: short, confident strokes set out to chisel the pieces of wood he had collected.  By now, I, the unsolicited chaperon, was beginning to feel that a nasty frostbite was about to claim my toes and fingers. So, I decided to bolt inside and throw myself by the roaring fire of the woodstove, and  beckoned the boys to do the same. 

Needless to say, the boys, unbothered, unhurried, lingered on a while longer. And, when the door finally opened to reveal the cherry-red faces of two beaming youngsters, each one was proudly holding up his treasures. Dan came running to me to show his new acquisition, "mom, mom, look! Mathew made this for me!" In his outstretched palm lay a beautiful carved mini totem pole! And, in Mathew's,  was his Swiss army knife.

Joanna, Mathew's mother, sitting beside me, sighed. "This is all he does: whittle!" 

"But, it is simply beautiful!" I exclaimed.

"You know, we have been here for two years, and, he hasn't made a single friend. He cannot concentrate in school. His grades are constantly falling. Imagine, when he goes to Middle school! How would he ever cope with that?" Joanna was positively stressed.

On the eve of the second anniversary of International Day of Education,  let us  commemorate the Mathews of the world, who get the axe for not being able to assimilate the deadwoods of  the conventional schooling system, and yet, can bring any number of deadwoods to life with their gift of imagination and untapped talents.