different perspectives, Hungary, girls, mamka, papka, I don't always get it
I got into the high school specializing in languages and impressed everyone by doing nothing but studying, all the time, big books gasping open all around me. My mamka started calling me "the Scholar" and bragged openly about my skills in French and English and German and Russian, all the while I was in my room, learning more and more. My papka was a bit different about it- a layer of discomfort, like coarse hair in a comb, at having a bookish daughter who could only spit only proverbs. He always echoed my mother, "Good job, Janinka!" But something in the way his pupils rolled away when he pushed a smile at me made me want to disappear forever. He observed me the way you look at people who do small tasks with too much passion and precision.
