Unexpected Things

Life is a sequence of surprises punctuated by our reactions to them. Here is the recent sequence of unexpected events happening here.

First, I brought in the socks for FJ on Friday. I tied them with some other yarn in our classroom yarn basket and put it into his hanging file folder, where we return graded work to the students. I announced at our morning meeting what my plan was (to knit gifts for each of them) and that the sixth years would be getting socks. Some excitement, some questions. Neither unexpected. Then I explained that I had chosen a sixth year student randomly and had knit the first pair for him -- FJ. More surprise. The unexpected part? There were no hard feelings, jealousy, or difficulties that arose from this. The students were excited and when I explained that I wanted the gifts to go to use as soon as they were completed, they were nodding. I was surprised at their maturity. I thought about my own ten-year old son and whether he would be as mature about it.

New socks for SA have been started and I'm about to hit the heel. I want to finish by Friday or Saturday. SA is a sixth year student who is quiet and seems to be fairly low key, unless you hit upon a topic she loves: namely, rabbits. One day, while the class was walking to a park in town for a field trip, she and I talked at length about our rabbits. She also loves pink. Her moms have brought her up in the way that I secretly wish I'd brought up my own kids -- no sugar, no processed foods. When kids talk about candy or processed/artificial foods, she honestly has no idea what they even are sometimes. I realize that there are minuses to being raised like this, certainly. But when I come home to a boy who refuses to eat homemade pizza but will wolf down the frozen version, I don't much care about the minuses. I bet SA never screamed her way out of her chair and up into her bedroom after dinner because she demanded candy and her mother said no. Not that my lovely daughter has ever done such a thing. So, the unexpected part of SA's socks? I kind of like them. I thought I wouldn't. I, after all, don't love pink. But these are quite nice together, although I'm not sure about the stripes.

Friday's other unexpected event was a little disappointing. FJ and a friend of his from the class got into a fight in our afterschool program. Not a disagreement, but a fistfight-rolling-on-the-ground type of fight. The kind I expected to see pretty regularly in my last teaching job -- in urban Springfield -- but not so much here. Even though I know there are several factors at play -- including some typical adolescent stuff -- it was still unexpected. From the point of view of his teacher, I was disappointed in him since he is supposed to be one of the role models for our class and is certainly a role model for his younger siblings in the school. As someone who had just knit him socks -- which he was WEARING at the time of the fight -- I wanted to take them off, shake them at him, and say: "THESE ARE PEACEFUL SOCKS!! YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO FIGHT PEOPLE IN THESE SOCKS!!" I didn't. But I wanted to.