Adam's Mum Recalls His Childhood, Explained：wouldn't know about that

What's really going on

This is the softer half of the coming-out: no argument, just a mother working through old memories and new fears. She starts with the past — "I suppose I never did know what was going on in that odd little head of yours" — and lists the times Adam ran off, half-teasing, half-confessing that she never understood him. But the worry underneath is clear. "They say it's a very lonely kind of life," she says, and then asks about the disease she once saw advertised with a gravestone. Adam refuses both fears at once: "If I am, it's not because I'm gay." He insists everything is different now; she answers that she probably wouldn't know. The flapjacks she sends with him say what she can't.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• They say frames a rumour as shared opinion.
• Be worried about means to carry a quiet anxiety.
• As far as marks how far someone actually got.
• I suppose softens a claim into a guess.

発音のポイント

• going on in — Run going-on-in together without a break.
• you're not — You're is reduced to a quick yer before not.
• Should I — Should and I link into one sound, shu-dye.
• won't be — The t in won't is often dropped before be.