coffee no. 83

I used to teach a group of seven year old children who were very vivid and cheerful. Only one girl was always silent, withdrawn and lonely. I called her behaviour an "Eeyore syndrome", because she was always unhappy and pessimistic. While the other children were most of the time "fine", she was "not very well". The reasons of that saddness were utterly silly (for adults, of course). For her it was a real disaster when she was two minutes late for the lesson, when her braid had unplaited or something like this. It was very difficult to make her laugh or play. She was sitting at the table, but I knew that her thoughts were far away from the classroom. I did not want to bother her, because, surprisingly, she learned a lot, even when it looked like she was not attentive at all.
One day Eeyore Girl came up to me in the middle of the lesson. It was the first time she had ever approached.
'You know, some time ago I had intestinal flu', she said in whisper.
And after some seconds I realized that she decided to entrust me with maybe one of her biggest secrets.