LET'S ASK MR. LEE

                                       New Release from Chris Bowen, The Bell Maker

     He walks in.  He has a perfected strut already.  He’s thirteen and he looks around the room with his brash smile poised high in the air, expecting girls to blush and boys to cower.  He also has about eight new facial hairs in a few small clumps.  It looks like smudges, as if he’s been doing a little light chimney sweeping, but to him it bellows out, “I have arrived!  I am a man!”  These first flushes of puberty sometimes come with arrogance and a mean streak.  It’s usually temporary.  Sometimes it is not.  Sometimes it’s a more permanent way to approach the world.  Either way, it must be squashed.  Laid to rest.  Mix this mean arrogance with thirteen-year-old impulsive behavior and some rather offensive phrases can come popping out of their mouths.

     He takes a seat in the front row.  Dead center.  He does not sit here in order to better see the board or to improve the quality of his education.  He sits here to ensure he has the fullest possible audience.  Arrogance thrives on an audience.

     A few minutes later, the serenity of silent reading is broken.  I look to see that our new “man” has turned to the crowd and in an attempt to grow his fan base, is making faces for all to see.  Actually, not faces.  It’s just one face.  He is pulling back his eyes to make the well-known racist Asian eyes.  I stare at him.  Usually a kid stops at this point, but he has facial hair, so clearly he does not need to step down.  He elects to ramp things up a bit.

     “How do Asian people see?” He asks me.  The chuckles behind him build.

     “I don’t know,” I answer.  “Why do racist people talk?”  I ask back.  The chuckles subside. 

     “What?”  He asks rhetorically, mocking confused over-the-top hand gestures.  “It’s just a question.”

     “You’re right,” I say, sounding apologetic.  “That was rude.  I’m sorry for what I said.”  I’ve seen boxers and possums feign injury in order to allow that false feel of victory to creep in.

     “It’s okay,” he says almost triumphantly.  “I accept your apology.”  His tone gains a few more chuckles.  It’s almost as if he feels sorry for me, and is capable of empathy.  But he’s a few troubled times away from developing any sense of empathy for anyone.  Right now, it’s his world and we just live in it.  He turns back to the audience and does the face again.  “Seriously, does anyone know?  It’s just a question.”  His audacity alone is a big hit with the crowd.

     I sit down and start to write a note.  It’s caught his attention.  He rolls his eyes.

     “What?  Am I in trouble?”

     “No.  Not at all.  I just want you to get an answer to your question.  I’m writing a note for you to go next door and ask Mr. Lee.  He’s Asian.  Originally from Korea.  From the corner of my eye, I can see the color start to leave his face.

     “No, I don’t want to ask Mr. Lee,” he says.  His voice is vaguely pleading.

     “It’s no problem,” I assure him.  “He’s a nice guy.  I’m sure he’ll give you an answer.”  I go back to my note.

     “No, no.  I don’t want to ask.”

     “Why not?”  I ask.

     “Because,” is all he can say.

     “Because why?”  I ask.  No answer.  “Why don’t you want to ask Mr. Lee how Asian people are able to see? “  I pause.  “It’s just a question.”

     “I don’t know,” he answers after a while.

     “Yes.  You absolutely know.”   There’s another pause.  I may not be getting the chuckles, but you can easily hear a pin drop and I have my audience leaning out over the edges of their desks.  “Say it,” I urge, changing my tone.

     “You absolutely know why you don’t want to ask Mr. Lee how Asian people are able to see.  Say it.”  I hover close to the desk and don’t move.  And I won’t move until I get my answer. I am fully prepared to wait him out.

     “Because it’s racist,” he mumbles.

     “Speak clearly, please.”

     “Because it’s racist,” he says.  This time it’s loud enough for the room to hear.

     “Thank you,” I say.  I drop the empty slip of paper that was my alleged note unto his desk just to let him know I was bluffing.  “It’s not your audience, sir.  It’s mine,” I say for future reference. I pretend to study his face with mother-like concern.  “Looks like you’ve got some dirt on your face,” I say pointing to his small cluster of frail facial hairs.  He looks up.  Though it needed to be done, I do feel sorry for him for a moment.  Luckily, enough people along the way have taught me how to have a little empathy for others.

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THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE

                                       New Release from Chris Bowen, The Bell Maker

 

He is autistic.  He can’t loosen his grip on the super hero loop.  Everything.  All of it comes scrolling back through his maze of super hero connections and literal definitions.  To hear the loop kick in is to almost hear an old record skip in that same spot play after play.

     Super heroes.  His adopted filter.  It is almost as if he is attempting to conjure them to help keep the world at bay.  Autism and puberty, swirling together as one.  I can only assume this must be an intense experience.  The bad drug trip that won’t let you come down anytime soon.

     He is defined as high functioning autism.  Content at school that is very literal and black and white comes quite easy to him.  Impressive memory ability.  But, “reading between the lines” presents all kinds of problems.  Literature comes with many assumed points of reference he is simply not wired to have.  When thinking about it this way, the super hero motif makes even more sense.  The good guys and the bad guys are easily and clearly defined.  Out here?  Outside the Fortress of Solitude, nothing is very clear.  The sea of gray laps up onto the shores of his assigned fortress quite often.

     I should mention that years ago, he would have just been considered odd.  Quirky.  A bull’s eye for bullies.  But his diagnosis affords him some breathing room here.  Generally, kids tend to not look to humiliate the autistic.  There is some camaraderie.  It is almost as if the diagnosis serves as a PSA reminding kids not to bully.  Or, at the very least, to follow a few basic boundaries when they do. 

     Most of the time, he is very easy going.  He occasionally strays from his loop, but never too far.  He’s the kid in tag that never lingers too far from home base.  But lately, he is having a hard go of it.  His placid face has been distorted.  Deep distress has enveloped his brow.  A meeting has been called with him in order to try and sort through the troubled look in his eyes.  Mom comes in as well.  He has had some incidents at home that we need to know about.

     I always dread these meetings.  These are the meetings designed to limit hope.  These are stage four sorts of situations.  We are here to manage pain and lower expectations.

     All parents.  All decent, hard working parents love their children.  It was their children that taught them the power and infinite vulnerability of unconditional love.  And all parents, no matter how poor or how educated or how well adjusted ---- all of them hold on to hope for their children.  Parents are the keepers of their hope.   They hold their hope for safe keeping, until a time when the child can hold onto his or her own hope, latch it onto a few dreams of their own.  From the first time a parent checks and counts the correct number of fingers and toes on that first day, they’ve been holding onto their hopes.  Guardians, guarding their child’s right to dream with almost as much fervor as they have guarded the kid’s physical presence.  When it is time to begin managing expectations, when it is time to begin hoping for the best, yet preparing for much less, sometimes that guardianship to a lot of broken, contorted dreams can be very difficult to relinquish.

     We move through formalities, the reasons for the meeting.  We handle some small talk.  Everybody is looking for the easiest way to begin the business at hand.  We start with the student.  As suspected, we aren’t getting any answers.  Shrugs and grunts, mostly.

     “I don’t know,” is a popular response for quite a while.  Mom finds a moment to jump in.

     “Tell them about the roof,” she says.  In her voice you can hear the restrained pleading.

     “Tell us about the roof,” someone echoes.  We circle around an answer for a good ten or fifteen minutes.

     “I was going to jump,” he finally says, breaking our conversational loop.

     “Why were you going to jump?”  Someone asks.  He gets asked this same question by three different people.  Each person tries a different phrasing.  Each voice sounds a bit more nuanced than the one before.  Right before the question gets asked a fourth time, he leaps up out of his chair and stands straight, with stiff posture.  His fists are clenched, almost shaking with frustration. 

     “Because I am different!”  He shouts.  “I am different from everybody!  I am different, but I don’t know how to be the same, so I can never be the same.  Forever!  It will never be better!  Forever, it will not be better.”  No one says anything for a while, mainly because there is nothing to say.  He’s right. 

     My mother used to say that she wished that she understood a lot more or a lot less.  She said it was painful sometimes to know just enough to appreciate how much you didn’t know.  Nowhere had it been truer than in that moment with that little boy.  We really just sort of watch him cry for a while.  Finally, someone asks,  “Why didn’t you jump?”  He immediately looks up.  His face has changed.  The question has snapped him back into his groove.

     “I knew that I wouldn’t die.  I would only break a few bones.  Typically, super heroes jump off low rooftops like mine, but it’s only to gain momentum for a much bigger jump.”

     And we are back on line.  We are dwelling back among the superheroes that champion a clearly defined world order.  But, this is far from over.  Like all good villains, puberty and its self-loathing death-grip will return with a newly hatched plan of attack.   But, for now, the tide has pulled back and our hero has rediscovered his serenity deep within his Fortress of Solitude.

If you're enjoying the blog, here's a book I recommend. "Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom," is available at Amazon. Now available for the Kindle.