Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town

  I should be precise: Nobody was scared of the assistant principal. There might have been students frightened by the principal, though I'd wager that was largely because he had the intimidating two letters "Dr." before his name.

  But the assistant principal--in my memory, at least, a heavyset man with a thick shock of hair that was just starting to gray and the sort of boxy eyeglasses that Hollywood always places on the Mission Control scientists in Gemini- and Apollo-era space movies--was always called Mr. D.

  Mr. D. was Joe Dinnan. And Joe Dinnan knew how to talk to children about the things that mattered to them with a knowledge that in hindsight can honestly be considered extraordinary. It was Mr. D. who recommended to me in the school library that I read Johnny Tremain in the third grade and then, two years later, remembered my interest in the Revolutionary War and suggested April Morning. It was Mr. D. who could mediate a dispute with the potential to grow ugly, a hallway debate in which one group of kids thought Don McLean's "American Pie" was the best song ever written and another contingent was arguing with equal fervor it was the Jackson Five's "I'll Be There."

  Mr. D. understood the fact that the New York Mets were in the World Series in 1969 was an event of legitimate historical importance, and we should be witness to it. He allowed my class to watch the game on television--yes, Virginia, once the World Series was actually played in daylight so children could see it, too--even though we were supposed to be learning fractions.

  And, what is probably the greatest gift any teacher or administrator can give to a child, he knew how to make us feel special. When, somehow, I would find myself completely alone on the playground during recess or lunch, separate from the running and the goofing and the noise, it was always Mr. D. who would track down a baseball glove, hand me mine, and patiently toss a softball with me until it was time to go in.

  Town meeting is fast approaching, and either on Monday night or sometime on Tuesday, many of us will be staring at the rows of numbers that comprise our local school budgets. Sometimes, it's easy to forget that behind all those figures are flesh-and-blood teachers and administrators who, more times than not, are inspiring and impressive and wise.

  The principal at the Lincoln elementary school, Bill Jesdale, is a lot like Mr. D. I understand on occasion he is even called Mr. J.

  Likewise, I have every faith that the Lincoln teachers my daughter will have--the ones who will teach her to read, the ones who will tell her of Rosa Parks, the ones who will have her watch baby chicks hatch--will be every bit as wondrous as my best memories of the teachers I had when I was a boy. I imagine the same can be said of the teachers in (for example) Richmond, Colchester, or Cornwall.

  Consequently, when you look at those charts at town meeting a little later this week, remember that as helpful as those numbers may be, they can never convey how on any given day a good teacher or administrator will make sure a group of small children will know that they matter.

  Chapter 6.

  WILL SLEEPING BEAUTY WAKE

  FOR SCHOOL?

  THERE'S A SCHOOL bus stop at the end of my driveway, which for the past two years served as my four-year-old daughter's alarm clock. The Gale and Brown children who would wait there for the bus were the only thing standing between Grace's getting to preschool on time and the inevitable destruction of a million-plus brain cells that would have accompanied her sleeping till 9:00 and then watching the midget Martians who've infiltrated PBS and call themselves Teletubbies.

  My daughter would hear the inspiring sounds of the older children waiting for another chance to go to school--a boom box blasting Marilyn Manson, the wheels of in-line skates smashing onto asphalt from the height of the nearby church steeple--and she would peer out her bedroom window with interest.

  My wife and I would then be able to cajole her downstairs and get her ready for preschool. The school bus alarm worked wonders because the bus would arrive shortly before 8:00, which meant we had the full hour we needed before preschool began to convince her that Oreos weren't breakfast, and then find an outfit that would appeal to buddies Bridgette and Ellen--a profound enigma, since Ellen wears only overalls and Bridgette wears only skirts.

  Now my point isn't that it was difficult to get my daughter out the door--though it could be.

  My point is that my daughter sleeps like a mummy. There have been times I've been tempted to put a mirror over her mouth, and mornings when she's slept through the world's most cloying alarm: The Barbie Clock Radio.

  "Ding, ding, ding. Hi. I'm Barbie. Ding, ding, ding. Hi. I'm Barbie."

  Then it starts emitting the sort of beep that engineers at nuclear power plants hear when a radiation leak has just started twisting carrots into pretzels.

  Once, my wife heard the alarm beep eighty-one times before Grace turned it off . . . and then went back to sleep.

  Well, tomorrow morning, a few minutes before 8:00, that school bus will once more coast to a stop at the end of our driveway, but for the first time my daughter will be expected to get on it. Tomorrow is her first day of kindergarten, the day she begins going to school.

  And so, like many parents, my wife and I have spent weeks wringing our hands at the prospect. We wonder two things:

  * How did she grow up so quickly?

  * How are we going to convince the neighbor children to start waiting at the bus stop at 7:00 A.M., so we can get Grace out the door by 8:00?

  These are universal questions. It really does seem like yesterday that I tried to console my sobbing daughter a few days after she was born by offering her Placebo Breast: I held a pacifier to my naked chest, and told her my chest hair was a sweater. (It worked, but only because Grace was less than a week old and hadn't yet met her fashion-conscious friends Bridgette and Ellen.)

  In any case, the first question is easier to answer than the second. Yes, in three months Grace will turn five, but a half-decade isn't really a long time at all. Our president has sex scandals older than that.

  The second question poses a real conundrum, however, and my wife and I indeed wonder what we're going to do weekday mornings for the next thirteen years. Our hope--and we cling to it the way I do to every strand of hair on my folliclely challenged cranium--is that by getting her to bed early, she'll wake up early. Perhaps, we delude ourselves, we've simply allowed her to stay up too late all these years, playing and reading and watching Jay Leno. We'll see. We'll certainly know by this time tomorrow whether putting her to bed right after breakfast today did any good. With any luck, she will have gotten on the bus with her lunch box, waved to her parents from the window . . . and not noticed that the two of us were sobbing into our coffee cups.

  Chapter 7.

  A CRUSH ON YOUR TEACHER IS

  NO EXCUSE TO ACT LIKE A GEEK

  WHEN I WAS in fourth grade, I had a crush on my teacher so powerful that during the first days of school the woman must have thought I was mute. I was completely incapable of speaking casually around her, and when she started to call on me in late September, calling on me largely, I imagine, to see what my voice sounded like, my answers were mumbled and soft.

  There were many reasons why I had a crush on Thalia Kominos (the name itself was an aphrodisiac). She had a mane of creosote-black hair that cascaded far down her back, a lengthy waterfall indeed because Mrs. Kominos was tall. A statuesque beauty. She was also an immensely gifted teacher, the sort of person who could make even math interesting--no small accomplishment, since I viewed math with the same distaste I had for my mother's cold cabbage and sausage soup.

  Moreover, Mrs. Kominos had a teenage daughter roughly my brother's age, and somehow I got the notion into my head--mistaken, I'd learn later--that the girl was dating one of my brother's best friends.

  Growing up, there was nothing I wanted more than to be my popular older brother or one of his friends. He was always class president, he played drums in a garage band that seemed to have weekly gigs at pool parties with gorgeous teen girls, and he achieved straight A's without effort. r />
  Consequently, it was perhaps inevitable that I would become attracted to Thalia Kominos.

  In fact, I actually grew protective of her, despite my inability to speak above a whisper around her. When she would lose control of the class, I would actually try to convince my friends to retake their seats or will them to settle down.

  It was this protectiveness that caused me to open my mouth that October and say the most embarrassing thing I have ever said in my life.

  Mrs. Kominos was trying desperately to keep us interested in the names of the South American capitals. Alas, she was failing: The class was giggling and passing notes, or ignoring her and talking aloud. The room was noisy, a point that matters not simply because it meant that it was difficult to be heard, but because I want to be sure you understand the decibel level of the action that precipitated my small outburst.

  Someone (and this is a family newspaper, so I will use the scientific terms) expelled intestinal gas consisting largely of hydrogen, sulfide, and methane. And this person expelled it loudly. It sounded like a rocket ship lifting off.

  The result was chaos: The class was howling, groaning, screaming.

  It was then that I dramatically altered the trajectory of my year in fourth grade. I slammed my hand down hard on my desk to get the class's attention and said, "Calm down! It's a perfectly natural bodily function."

  For a split second the class did grow quiet while they digested my pronouncement, but only for a second. Then the magnitude of what I had just said became clear: I had just called the funniest sound a fourth-grader can make "a perfectly natural bodily function." The class descended into bedlam, and even Mrs. Kominos had to bury her head behind her arms because she was laughing so hard at my colossally geek-like behavior.

  It took me months to live that one down, and even by June there was the risk that whatever I said at the playground would elicit the response: "It's a perfectly natural bodily function." I could ask someone the time and he'd look at his watch and answer, "It's a perfectly natural bodily function."

  My own daughter will start fourth grade when school begins this Wednesday, and so I have shared this tale with her and with her friends Yuki, Bridgette, and Ellen. I view this as thoughtful parenting.

  Good luck, students. Study hard and never (even if you believe you are protecting your teacher) refer to the inadvertent expulsion of intestinal gases as "a perfectly natural bodily function."

  Chapter 8.

  DON'T BELIEVE ALL YOU READ:

  THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

  FIVE YEARS AGO my wife and I were watching two young teenage girls in leotards and dance pants, and my wife murmured to me, "Will you look at that posture and poise? That's why you have your daughter take ballet."

  Our own daughter was a few weeks shy of four at the time, and she was one of a dozen preschoolers and kindergartners toddling around in tutus the size of open umbrellas while Jennifer Barden, their dance teacher, worked nobly to keep a straight face, since the first ballet position for most of the kids was toppling over and the second was picking their nose.

  The teenagers, Krista Billings and Stephi Needham, were assistant dance teachers, and my wife and I would learn later that they had been dancing with Barden since they were toddlers themselves. Over the last half-decade, my wife and I have seen Billings and Needham as they continued to assist Barden in the dance studio, as well as when they danced themselves in the end-of-the-year recitals.

  The two young women did everything from literally holding a child around her waist while she first lifted a leg, ostrich-like, and figured out that she could indeed balance on one foot, to demonstrating how to adjust the laces on a ballet slipper. They knew all their own dances, of course, but also all of the dances that the younger classes would be learning as well.

  As a matter of fact, among my very favorite memories of either girl would be the final recital in June 2001, when Needham--then a junior in high school--donned the costume of an apparently very good-natured octopus and danced on the Mount Abraham high school stage with a group of four- and five-year-old pip-squeaks to the old Beatles song "Octopus's Garden." There are not many sixteen-year-old girls in this world who would willingly climb into an octopus costume and dance with kindergartners on a high school stage.

  This month Billings and Needham graduated from high school. They will both start college in the fall and will no longer be assisting Barden at her dance studio. Billings plans to study architecture at Norwich University, while Needham will study child psychology and development at Southern New Hampshire University.

  My wife and I worry often about the cultural pressures that seem to beleaguer teen girls these days, especially given how quickly our own daughter seems to be growing up. We have read about the eating disorders, the self-loathing, and the pressures to be popular and beautiful and wear suitably snug jeans. We have seen the statistics about teenage drug use and sex, and have shaken our heads ruefully.

  But then we see young women like Billings and Needham, and we breathe massive sighs of relief. Yes, the high school hallways today might be filled with croptops and tattoos, and there are young women who define themselves solely in terms of their friends, their sexuality, or their cars.

  There are also, however, teen girls who have transcended the stereotype and offer glorious role models for the children five and ten years behind them.

  Earlier this month in a savvy Newsweek magazine cover story about the state of teen girls, writer Susannah Meadows outlined the three factors that seem to encourage confidence, independence, and emotional well-being:

  * After-school activities

  * Parents who are supportive and involved with their daughters

  * A solid grounding in the family's religion

  These might be common sense for many parents, but they are important and worth repeating.

  Godspeed, girls. And thank you for being there for my daughter.

  Chapter 9.

  A PERSON CAN LEARN A LOT

  FROM IAN FREEMAN

  IAN FREEMAN'S coffee-colored hair is slicked back in an Elvis Presley pompadour. The fourteen-year-old has the late rock star's stage swagger down pat, as well as the Presley sneer: boyish and ingratiating one moment--the smile of a shy kid from Mississippi who doesn't quite understand what all the fuss is about--self-assured and almost roguish the next. The music begins, a series of vibrant guitar riffs, and girls race from their seats to the very edge of the stage, waving their arms and screaming. Freeman raises his eyebrows with a rock star's studied insouciance and twirls his microphone at these adoring fans. If you squint, it is almost possible to see the King strutting there on the boards, instead of a teenage boy with Down syndrome.

  Ian is lip-synching to the music on a Thursday afternoon in an annual show in northwest Vermont in which all the acts feature performers with developmental disabilities. This year the show is in the Contois Auditorium, the modest theater in the city hall building in Burlington. I like the notion that the mayor of the state's largest city (by far) and most of the city administrators are working nearby: It adds a veneer of mainstream approval to a cabaret in which the mere fact that one of the performers is playing "Ode to Joy" on an electric organ matters far more than his technical prowess.

  I've become friends with Ian because his mother and my nine-year-old daughter--both of whom are named Grace--are performing in a community theater together, and Ian, the two Graces, and I have been carpooling together two hours a day, four days a week, to rehearsals. The two Graces have voices and ranges that put Ian's and mine to shame when we sing together in the car, a reality that troubles Ian not at all and me, these days, only a bit.

  Before I met Ian, I was sufficiently self-conscious that I would never have sung in the car.

  Grace Freeman has been raising Ian entirely on her own since the boy was born. She has no other children. She and Ian's father broke up while Grace was pregnant--the two weren't married--and she had never expected there would be any co-parenting.
br />   It is no easy task to be a single mother in even the best of circumstances, and it is particularly challenging when your child has Down syndrome. Ian also was born with a variety of other ailments that often accompany Down syndrome, including deafness and asthma. But Grace and Ian have been their own small world for almost a decade and a half now, and my sense is that if their little planet isn't perfect, in some ways it may spin more smoothly than the one on which most people roam. Ian is the first person with Down syndrome with whom I've become friends, and as I've gotten to know him it's become apparent that he has a good deal more to teach me than I am likely to teach him.

  Ian and I and the two Graces are in a pizza parlor on our way to one of the first rehearsals for the show the females are in. Ian's mother is an elementary school teacher by day and an active member of a variety of community theater groups by night. When she isn't performing in a show, as she is now, she is likely to be a music director. Almost Ian's entire life he has been with her at rehearsals, and so he knows musicals the way some teenagers know MTV videos. His favorites at the moment are The Secret Garden, the show his mother just finished in Burlington, and Once on This Island, the show she is doing now in Stowe, Vermont. His ability to memorize entire librettos would be impressive with any child, but it is particularly striking given that Ian reads at a second-grade level and so he learns them largely through what he picks up with his hearing aids. (When I expressed, evidently with no small sense of wonder, Ian's uncanny ability to learn song lyrics to Kim Xidas of the National Association for Down Syndrome, she reminded me gently, "People with Down syndrome have gifts just like anyone else.")