the garden is rosy...one day... as I was coming home from school... on foot...as I approached the street... with everybody playing soccer...I started saying...you can throw me the ball...!! like a shower throw...!! so I can head it...!!...and... at this moment... all my friends totally ignored me...as if I wasnt existing at all...they didnt pay any attention to my presence...they wanted to make sure that I was being ignored by them...in a way that Ive never seen anything like that...in my whole life...at this point... I didnt understand anything...I thought to myself... what is going on...?I asked them...they answered... saying that...they were giving me the cold shoulder...I didnt know what the expression give the cold shoulder means...they explained: its when somebody stops talking to another one... for some reason...then I asked what was the reason...they told me...but even today... I still dont remember what was the reason...( I think I was so shocked with the cold-shoulder episode itself... that... when they explained me the reason... my mind probably wasn't in conditions to understand what they were saying... and I didnt ask them to repeat the explanation... either... ) I became a little-bit disturbed with this first experience on my life...of feeling that... the society... the group of friends... has this capacity for rejecting someone...and... life is a sequence of lessons of this type...life keeps moving on...episodes like this-one keep on happening... regardless of the age...we keep on knowing new people...we start to feel relaxed and at home with them...and... suddenly... something happens...we hear something from them that suddenly surprises us...and it does get us by surprise...its like receiving a big punch in the face...life... often embarrasses us with something similar...but this kind of thing doesnt happen only between two people...sometimes such surprises... such disappointments...show up between a person and an institution...between a person and a government...between a person and a school...between a person and the corporation where he (she) works...when I was in Hawaii... still on my first years there...when I was studying for my masters in math...working hard to be a straight-A student...I used to do my homeworks in an exaggerated diligent way...on the first semester I got an A...on the second semester I got a B...on the third semester I got a B...on the fourth semester I got a C...suddenly... I received a letter from school...saying that I was in probation...that is... if I didnt get an A on the next semester...I would be kicked-out of school...that was a kind of a punch in my face...to realize that they had been so harsh on me...yes... on me... who had tried to do my best...as a straight-A student...but... this time... in this case... I let myself get too much depressed...because of a simple little letter coming from school...I should... ( facing the problem brought by the letter...)I should have tried to go there...to get more information about what was going on...I should have tried to listen to the opinion of my teachers...who deeply knew me...... instead of letting myself get so depressed by a letter...that maybe was sent by an administrative-office