Mr. Awesome and Crew

November 16, 2009

It is 5:20 on Monday night and I am sitting at my dining room table in the light of three candles and one laptop screen. There power is out. Today…today…what a day.

Monday our kids have Physical Education first. They came to us at 9:05 for math class. As they were settling down and trickling in a third grade boy came up to me with a concerned face.

“Ginna, ***** is sad. I tried to get him to come into class, but he ran behind the library.”
Now, this kid, ***** is an awesome kid, so for the sake of the rest of my blogs, lets refer to him by the name Mr. Awesome, because he is. Let’s start over.

“Ginna, Mr. Awesome is sad. I tried to get him to come into class, but he ran behind the library.”
The kid informing me of this?Another cool kid. He always comforts other kids and is the first one to want to translate if needed. Lets call him, IGotYou, since he will almost always have your back. Let’s try again.

It was 9:05, the third and fourth graders were trickling into math class from P.E. IGotYou approached me with a worried look on his face.

“Ginna, Mr. Awesome is sad. I tried to get him to come into class, but he ran behind the library.”

I said: “Thank you, IGotYou, for letting me know.”
I thought: “Crap. Now I have to go behind the library with my sparkly shoes and they are going to get all wet.”
I kept inside: a laugh. Behind the library? Bless his awesome little soul, he must be so sad.
I turned to Tedi. “Um, I’m going to…go find a kid?”
For whatever reason this did not strike Tedi as weird or alarming and she just noded her head at me and kept her eye on the conflict resolution corner where a conflict was not resolving itself.

I stepped outside the classroom and there he was: Mr. Awesome. Lets take a minute to describe Mr. Awesome. He is a third grade boy with knobby knees and floppy brown hair that hangs in his eyes. He is skinny and wobbly. He is my brother when my brother was in third grade. He’s trying to get into sports to have someone to play with at recess and knows more about dinosaurs than any adult I have ever known. When I see him in the hallway he is standing with his head hung low, not making movements towards math class.

Action Plan #1: Try to trick the kid out of being sad. This is one of my favorite things to do. When it works, it works like a charm and makes me feel sneaky and clever, but in the name of Good. Example: Last Friday a four-year-old boy fell down and scraped his elbow. I hid behind pillar observe. He started to whimper, looked around and saw no one and fell quiet. He took a few steps towards where his father was seated across the front lawn and wound up to wail. I popped out from behind the pillar with a huge smile on my face. “Wow! Yes! You totally wiped out! Was it a real one? Is there blood? If there is no blood it doesn’t count. “
He lifted his elbow to see if there was blood and saw none. I am lucky that he is not super flexible or else he would have seen that in fact he was bleeding. He looked up at me and shook his head. Nope, no blood.
“Awww, man! No blood? You’re gonna have to try harder next time.” And then the kid smiled and I walked away.

When I saw a pouty Mr. Awesome this morning outside of math class I thought quickly and remembered that he had been on a trip that weekend. Really, wit had nothing to do with it – his cheeks were pink from the beach.

“Hey, there you are Mr. Awesome! How was Nicaragua? Did you have fun? You look like you got some sun!”
Mr. Awesome looked a little less sad. “Yeah, it was fun.” As he talked he had his right hand cupped over his mouth and kept his head down.
“What happened, did you get hurt?”
Mr. Awesome looks a little more sad and explained that during P.E. class, which was held in the meeting room due to the rain, he had tried to walk across the room with his eyes closed and three girls had run into him at once. Hm. Interesting.
“Was walking across the room with your eyes closed part of the activity?” I asked.
Here Mr. Awesome become more animated and in his roller coaster speech, explained: “Well, no. You see, I saw some of the tougher kids in class doing it and I wanted to be tough too so I tried it.”

And this is where my heart melted. Can you picture it? Skinny kid, knobby knees sticking out of his rubber boots, floppy damp hair hanging in his eyes, explaining how he got hurt, trying to be tough.
“Well, Mr. Awesome, you did it! You got yourself a fat lip, and it looks awesome! That seems pretty tough to me!” As soon as I said this I wondered if it was the right thing to say. One of the most wonderful things about this child is that he does not fit into traditional gender roles and he’s totally down with that. During a conversation earlier in the year about what boys can do and what girls can do he explained that not all boys like sports.
“I’m a boy,” he’d said, “and I don’t like sports. It’s just not my thing!” He was comfortable and confident. And then here I was telling him what a toughie he was because he got hurt trying to be tough like the other kids. Oops.

Well, he looked a little bit pleased with himself. He really did have a fat lip, and it really did look cool.
“Are you ready to come into class?” I asked, standing up from where I’d been crouched to get a better look at the swelling.
Mr. Awesome was not ready. Here enters another fantastic, intricate character: INoticed. This child is very observant and phrases his rather detailed and profound observations with, “I noticed that…” Mr. Awesome crumbled into tears. “IGotYou and INoticed called me a liar!”

“Did you talk to them about it?”
Head shaking. Hair flopping.
“Maybe after math class we can talk to them about it?”
Head nodding. Hair flopping. Mr. Awesome comes into class.

And this is the way the conversation went: After math class I asked IGotYou and INoticed over. “Mr. Awesome wants to talk with you.” Usually this is a step that we have the kids take themselves but since Mr. Awesome didn’t have time during math class, I did it for him. We sat down in a circle. IGotYou and INoticed are quiet and focused on Mr. Awesome. He begins:
“You called me a liar!”
“Now wait, Mr. Awesome”, I interjected. “We’re not accusing, we are telling what happened.”
INoticed, in a very kind way says, “Mr. Awesome, can I remind you that you’ve been calling me stupid?”
Mr. Awesome starts from the beginning and tells his experience. When he is done he sits quietly, pouting.
“And what do you need IGotYou and INoticed to do?” I guided.
“I need you to not do it anymore”, said Mr. Awesome through his fat lip.
IGotYou looked him right in the eyes and in a gentle voice said, “I’m sorry.”
INoticedspoke up. “Mr. Awesome? What did I do bad?”
Called me a liar. Eye contact. Gentle voice. “I’m sorry.” We talked for about 7 seconds about using gentle words even when we are playing and then they are off to recess, and I love my job.

In the time that I have been writing this, it has gotten darker. It is now 6:04 p.m. and I can just barely make out the fading light beyond the trees in my westward facing windows. It is dark and the neighbors have started drumming. They are recording an album of African music. Also during this time, a moth flew through the flame of a candle and careened into my face. I swatted it away only to have it circle back, fly directly into the base of the flame, crash into the wick, splash hot wax on my computer and then fall to its death inside the pitcher that is holding the candle.
Really? People have TVs and electricity? For what?

6:10 p.m. – Yay! Power is back on. Having no electricity is ok but really, only for a little while.

7:09 p.m. – I turned off and packed up my computer for the night, but cannot get my mind off Mr. Awesome and his awesome-ness. I feel the need to make a list.

Other Wonderful and Hilarious Things That Mr. Awesome Has Done

1. Last week at Wednesday meeting Mr. Awesome was sitting in the front row. It was a chilly day but Mr. Awesome had on only a t-shirt, shorts and rubber boots. To keep himself warm he pulled his arms into his t-shirt, tucked his knees up under his chin and stretched his t-shirt over his knees, down to his toes. Now Mr. Awesome was just a head, a t-shirt and a pair of boots. I tried to catch his eye to give him a gentle headshake so he would stop wiggling and fidgeting but he was a man with a mission. He pulled his head into his t-shirt and reduced himself further to just a grey t-shirt and a pair of boots. I started to laugh, which is just as distracting as a kid disappearing into his shirt and boots. I sighed and looked away. He was quiet, but he was cold. I opted to not look his way for the rest of meeting and remind him afterwards to bring a sweater.

2. A few weeks ago Mr. Awesome was in a three-person book group with two girls, one in fourth grade, and one in third. I was circulating among groups and stopped next to their table. This was the update that I got from the fourth grader: “I’m drawing what happened in chapter four, and she is drawing what happened in chapter five and Mr. Awesome”, here she paused and looked at him with half contempt and half confusion, “is drawing a monster.” I looked down. Mr. Awesome had drawn a marine animal leaping half out of the water with a long neck and a set of fierce teeth. Mr. Awesome sneered back across the table at the fourth-grader, “Its not a monster. It’s a Reallycomplexnameasourus from the Wordstoobigformetoremember period.” Duh.