River Ch 02

Several weeks after the Danny Disaster, when all tears had finally dried up and I was nearly my good old self again, I still hadn't stopped thinking about doing something different to try to find a loving, long lasting relationship. I just didn't know how to go about it. So I decided to put all relationship thoughts out of my head and just keep on going with work and the occasional outing with my closest friends.

Working with kids has always brought me so much joy and going to work is never a hardship, but sometimes you have days when everything all of a sudden seems upside-down, when a group of kids stop functioning together, start hitting each other with toys, throwing food around and thoroughly testing the limits of their teachers' patience. Sometimes we don't know the reason behind the change in the group dynamic, but it's usually because of introducing new children in the group or because of natural development steps as the children grow older.

The work week from hell started with us introducing a shy, sad looking boy in our group of five-to-six year olds. Since five and six year old children are naturally curious and full of questions about everything, the shy little boy was absolutely swimming in questions about where he was from, where he lived, if he had any brothers or sisters, if he had a dog or a cat, if he had any computer games and so on... and on... and on. I was working the lunch-afternoon-evening shift and hadn't been there when the boy - whose name was Sam - was introduced in the morning. And I wasn't there when Sam went into a fit of rage not being able to get away, having questions pushed at him from everyone, being too shy to answer almost anything. It was however very obvious that something was wrong in the afternoon, when everyone was angry at everyone and everything.

Imagine a six-year-old boy with wavy, blond hair and huge blue eyes. Like an adorable little angel boy; except curled up in a corner with a fierce scowl on his face, staring angrily around him. This was the way I found him when I walked in at the beginning of my workday. It was quickly decided that I should try to befriend him, while everyone else went for lunch.

All previous attempts from the teachers' side to coach him out of the corner into any activity had resulted in the boy screaming hysterically and crawling back into his corner. Based on what I knew about grumpy little boys (and big boys for that matter), I guessed that the best way would be to start doing something really interesting. Something that would make him leave his corner without me coaxing or nagging.

As it happens, one of my talents is in the area of origami, specifically in paper plane construction; and not just simple old fold-four-times paper planes, but proper, several sheets of paper (preferably in different colors) perfectly flying creations. And there's something about seeing paper planes flying very high and far that all little boys, even angry ones, really love.

After about 20 minutes of hard work, creating and throwing several tiny aircrafts all over the room, not looking at or speaking to Sam, a small voice beside me asked "can you make me a green and orange plane?" and 20 minutes after that, when everyone came back, I was busy teaching the now almost smiling boy how to build a perfect plane.

I'd like to say that that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but there was something about the boy that made him pull back slightly every time he found a friend. It did however make him stop sitting alone in the corner, and that was after all the intention of our first little interaction.

Since Sam was one of the boys with the longest days at kindergarten he and I met every day, come early morning or late evening. I noticed that he came with his father, when I worked early mornings, and that he left with his father, when I worked the evening shifts. The father was always in a hurry, giving the kid a quick hug and kiss and then running out of the door with a wave of his hand. All I ever had the time to notice was that he was a big looking guy with tousled hair and worry-lines covering his face. To be fair, the reason why I didn't really see him was probably because he was such a large man. For some reason, I found tall men really intimidating.

Weeks went by, and Sam opened up little by little and started playing more and more with the other kids. He and I used to have really interesting discussions about building things, and not a day went by without him constructing something completely new in any type of material. He was our little inventor, with such a big mind in such a small body.

I was working the afternoon-evening shift on a rainy Friday when we suddenly had a call from Sam's dad. He was running late and wouldn't be able to get back to fetch Sam on time and one of us would have to wait after closing hours. Since I had no plans I volunteered to wait. Sam wanted to show me a paper train he had built, using the same technique I showed him on his first day. And it really was an amazing construction, with wheels being the only thing missing. We tried a couple of different things as wheels, but couldn't really find anything that would work as well as Sam wanted them to. I made suggestions, which were all rejected by Sam, and in the midst of all of these discussions, Sam's dad snuck in. I don't know how long he had been standing there when we finally noticed him, but he had a strange, happy-but-sad smile on his face. And that's when I finally took a good look at him.

He was way above average length, with wide shoulders and strong arms and legs. Nothing about him seemed weak or even breakable; nothing except the tense and sad-looking expression in his face and something about how he held himself upright, like he was trying to carry the whole world on his shoulders.

That small something made me smile at him and tell him to join us in our train creation efforts. Half an hour later a perfect train with little rubber wheels carved out of a couple of erasers was carried by a smiling Sam out through the doors into the evening.