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Another situation that causes hurt is when you are compared with a student who isbrighter or cleverer than you. Do you agree? It may be mother or father at home whoconstantly ask you why you can’t get marks as high as your classmate. They don’trealise, unfortunately, how much that hurts you, but imagine their remarks will make youfare better the next time. But you feel bad and gradually, unless you care for your frienddeeply, you may become unfriendly with him! Similarly, sometimes in class too, teacherscompare students and rank them as ‘Very Good’ or ‘Average’ or ‘Poor’. That is whywhen the progress report is prepared, have you noticed how secretive you are and unlessyou have done extremely well in the tests, you don’t like to show the report to any one?You hide it and are even afraid to show it to your parents. What does that indicate? Thatyou do not want to get hurt further and as a result do everything to save your reputation inclass. You see, we care so much about what other people think of us, that we always wantthem to think highly of us. Only with friends can we share our True picture of ourselves.That is the reason why, sometimes, when your classmates burst out laughing upon you’regiving a stupid answer you feel hurt. If you are not a sportsman or if you are notintelligent you will keep all these feelings of hurt inside you bottled up and perhaps plansecretly how to take revenge on the boys you don’t like! One hurl leads to another and toanother and another and so on.Teasing each other at school starts as fun but sometimes ends up in a serious brawl.You all have nicknames for each other, don’t you? Fatso, Cadbury, I.umboo, Tube light,Golguppa, Cry-Baby, and so on. You don’t usually mind it, but sometimes when you arenot in the mood and the other fellow is not sensitive enough to notice that you are serious,he teases you at the wrong time and you come to blows. Perhaps your mother was angrywith you that morning or your teacher, or you were worried about something else but thisfellow continued to irritate you and you gave vent to all the anger inside you and beathim up. This is common and sad. Next time, observe your friend’s moods, be sensitive tohis feelings so that you don’t hurt him by leasing him out of all proportion. One can haveinnocent fun but it should not lead to another’s distress. Have you seen movies withCharlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy or Johnny Walker? Well, there are many situationsthat provoke a lot of innocent laughter, but you would have noticed that the moment thefun begins to hurt another, we stop laughing, the audience is quiet and our sympathies arewith the man who is hurt.Similarly, in some schools where hoys and girls study together, boys lease girls andgirls tease hoys, or if a girl is seen talking to a boy, other girls will tease her. Why doesthis happen? Is it not natural for girls and boys to talk to each other, share books, read andplay together? Sometimes- unfortunately, it could be the fault of elders, teachers orparents, who think that boys and girls should live and learn in different compartments,and so when you grow slightly bigger they begin to warn you and an uneasy climateprevails at school. It all starts as a joke in a very small way but soon the person who isteased gets very hurt and feels miserable. These results in unnatural relationships andboys learn to gang up with boys and girls with girls. What shall we do about thissituation?What else hurts you? We have referred to scolding by teachers, the behaviour ofclassmates, comparisons that are unhealthy for you teasing, and the pattern of behaviourof boys and girls as some examples. You can think of many more because you would