Joe

9.26.08 Joe

I awake on a Friday morning in September to the sound of a tumultuous rainstorm pelting spitballs against my bedroom window. I hurry into the daycare center where I work without giving a thought to breakfast, lunch or snack. Looking like a bedraggled rodent, I am greeted by the kitchen staff proffering a vegetarian sausage on a biscuit. Intrigued, I take one bite. Disgusted, I throw the rest away.

For a few minutes I am alone in the office, realizing that with the storm, and our staff’s rather spotty attendance and, to be generous, flexible work ethic, it’s going to be a challenging day. I visit the classrooms to say good morning before I begin my work. I peek in at the babies, schmooze with the toddlers, and eventually make my way into the preschool classroom in the basement. I brainstorm with the teacher to find a place to post photos so that they’re accessible to parents and children. We settle on the wall by the staircase, so that everyone can see the photos coming in in the morning and leaving at the end of the day.

After checking the office email, I go to my library in the attic; the one no one uses. The library has had a long and mostly unhappy history; originally donated and stocked by a women’s professional organization, it had been my task to enter the 2000+ books into a database. Unfortunately, that project had become a low priority and other tasks came first. The library had been in the attic in 2002; a year ago I was granted the privilege of re-creating the library on the first floor. Alas, that didn’t last long; the executive director decided to rip the library shelves out to create a tiny classroom for 5 three-year-olds and one teacher. The library books went back to the attic, and oblivion. However, today I am fortunate to have the services of an energetic young woman, and together we begin to organize the books according to subject. Any pretense of an orderly system was gone, but I do manage to find some of the most important categories: My Family, School, Colors, Shapes, Sounds, Food, Birthdays and Feelings. The Halloween books (there must be 50 of them, and at least 30 of them will be going home as Halloween presents) are on display for any teacher who wants them. Or has the energy or ambition to climb the stairs to the attic.

The Business Manager asks me to make some changes to the school’s website. I have been administering the website for over a year, and at this point I know more about it than anyone in the office. I suppose it doesn’t matter; the only person who looks at it is me. But I keep adding to the content, creating new pages and uploading photos. The pictures, however, cannot simply be uploaded. I have to create thumbnails through yet another program. It’s a tiresome process but I can do it in my sleep. I make his adjustments.

Phones ring; I answer them, and take messages. I organize the pictures stored in my computer to make it easier to find a picture by date. It probably looks like busy-work to others, because most of the teachers and all of the parents have no idea of how much work I do, or how important my work is to our development, fundraising and marketing operations.
I offer the parents the option to give me their email addresses, so that I can email them the pictures of their children directly, saving the office the price of printing out copies to send home.

I have lunch. It’s either tuna salad or chicken salad; I can’t tell, but it’s good.

Quietly, so as not to wake the toddlers who are sleeping in the classroom beneath the library, I find books that can be sent home with the children. The library books are worthless if no one reads them. I am slowing giving books away, with the approval of the director. I believe she will be happy when there are no books left. I also bring down as many picture books as I can carry. The shelf over my computer, seemingly the only space that I have been granted as my own, will house the colorful, amazingly beautiful and diverse picture books. Saving the teachers the walk upstairs, they will be able to choose books for their classes, until, eventually, that shelf will be taken from me too.

A few kitchen workers, mothers who have fallen on hard times, come into the office and begin discussing their situations with other staff members and me. I show one woman (my morning library partner) different types of resumes that would show off her career goals and special skills. She seems to have neither, but I give her some questions to take home to help her hone her resume, which I promise I will work on with her the next week. I make a bet with myself that she will not return. Everything in our school, from the books to the classrooms to the students to the staff, is so transient. Don’t get too attached to anything, or anyone, because you will probably never see them again. (In the future, I am correct. She does not return.)

While in my library/storage/pantry room, I discover a stash of potato chips. I feel noshy. At snack time I watch the children deconstruct their Oreos as I used to do, 50 years ago. I think I love this place, because it can transport me in an instant to a time when tiny things – a cookie, a coloring book – were large, and huge things – the state of the world, the energy crisis – were non-existent.

It is a hot, muggy, rainy day, and I am moving throughout the building, one room air-conditioned, one not, from floor to floor to floor. Passing through the toddler room as I run up and down the staircases, I see a little boy named Joe standing up, crying. Crying, and nobody paying attention. I suppose the teachers’ theory is that he will calm himself, and so they are not coddling him, but I don’t think they really have a theory governing such situations – I think they are ignoring him.

I don’t like picking up toddlers. Especially crying ones. There are too many fluids exiting too many orifices. I’m squeamish about bodily functions. I have another idea.

I go to the bulletin board, and find a picture of Joe that I had taken the week before.

I give him the picture.

He stops crying.

Pandas Strike Back

Me and my brothers were just playing in our yard when these American ladies came up and started talking to us. One was very pretty and one was very smart.

One of them, the pretty one, I guess, kept trying to feed us eucalyptus leaves. Don’t they know, that’s what you feel koalas, not pandas! They [koalas] are very annoying. We don’t even allow them on our continent! We kicked them to the curb 12,000 years ago and haven’t heard from them since. I think they ended up in that prison camp island, Australia.

We eat bamboo. It’s much more refined than eucalyptus leaves – and it has more fiber which we think helps to make us happy regular kids.

We play in our yard and people think that we’re so cute. Not all of us are cute. Some of our big brothers went to Hollywood in America and got themselves into a movie. They were practicing martial arts and they starred in a movie called, “Ju-Jitsu Pandas” which they thought was so cool because it had that lady Ms. Jolie. We actually like our own actress Gong Li, who makes mostly art-house movies, better. She doesn’t adopt lots of kids, either. I think she has them one at a time.

(We got a little nervous when that Jolie lady was here scouting for new kids for her family but then she skipped right over China and picked up one from Vietnam. She gave him a new name, Pax, which means Peace in her language. I’m sure he is very happy but it’s kind of funny how she changed his name. I think when you are three years old you have the right to decide what your own name is. Whatevs….)

People seem to think that we are very fat, cuddly animals. Don’t they know that we have to dress really warm to play in the snow? We are really very skinny, but we wear extra padded snowsuits when we go outside. They make us look really chubby. But underneath we are not. (All that fiber from the bamboo helps.)

We got a little freaked out by the visiting ladies because we thought they might really be from the Russia. They kept talking about their “fellow travelers.” Maybe we were very paranoid because they were looking in that book called “Red Channels.” They said it was just a guide for their hotel room TV. OK.

They said that they wanted to take one of us back to America with them for a friend. We didn’t want to go. Just give us plenty of bamboo and our furry snowsuits and we’re good to go. Maybe if there were some girl pandas here me and my brothers would be really, really happy.

East Meadow

She stepped outside the ABC studios in New York after the last show, looking for her boyfriend Rootie, the baseball player, the star of their TV show. They had arranged to meet after the finale, but as she looked north, south, east and west, there was no sign of him.

Their late-afternoon daily children’s show had been a phenomenon. The early days of television broadcasting had been a matter of much experimentation, though why some shows caught on, and others sunk into oblivion, there were no definitive answers. She was happy that the show had had its four-year run, and she and Rootie had planned to move to the Bronx, where Rootie was already hired by the Yankees to play ball.

As she stood shivering in the cold, it occurred to her that she had been stood up. Without Rootie to plan her life, she was adrift, abandoned, and very much alone. The other cast members had their own career paths; Big Todd Russell was headed out to Hollywood to see if he could make the Big Time.

She adjusted her outfit: white blouse with a pink, polka-dot skirt, shoes and socks and a bag that matched her skirt. With no coat, she realized that she had better find someplace to warm up. She started walking, soon finding herself at Pennsylvania Station. Not having any other plans, she bought a ticket for the next train that was leaving for Long Island.

Long Island was a land of opportunity, or so it seemed to be at that time. Families were moving into cozy little homes there, each family with its 2.3 children. She headed for Garden City, because she liked the name. She boarded the train, having no clue how her life was going to change.

But when she got there, she was just as confused and alone as she had been in New York. She stopped into a candy store at the station and ordered a Coke. A handsome young truck driver came and sat down beside her. He drove a parcel post truck. He was headed to East Meadow, where he was dropping off a few birthday presents for a little girl who was turning four years old that day.

The little girl was living in the Golden Zone of happiness in the early 1950s. A loving family, plenty of friends and neighbors, she only wanted one thing for her birthday. She had wanted that present since August of the previous year, when her family had bought its first television set, and she fell in love with a hand puppet on one of her favorite television shows.

She hadn’t lacked for toys; she already had several dolls. But this doll was special; her flirty eyes looking off to one side seemed to have an extra sparkle; her deep dimples punctuating her chubby cheeks; and her perpetually smiling mouth that gave her face a look that was at once both sweet and knowing.

The Parcel Post man drove up to the little house on Gerald Avenue. Polka Dotty got off the truck, and walked into the little girl’s heart.

She became the child’s most beloved companion. Manufactured by the Effanbee Doll Company, Polka Dotty’s head was molded vinyl, her body was stuffed and encased in a vinyl cloth. The little girl spent hours tracing the swirls and patterns in Polky’s molded hair, dressing and undressing the doll, until all her original clothes were lost. No matter; Polky was just as enthralled with her little fan.

The “Rootie Kazootie TV Show” went off the air in 1953. Nothing was heard of Big Todd Russell or any of the other actors on the show. Rootie eventually made his way to California, where he tried out as a Dodger in the late 1950’s. But like many other TV toys from the Golden Age, he ended up on Ebay.

Polka Dotty still lives with the little girl. She has a place of honor in a little wicker carriage with her best friend, Robin, a vinyl doll with a little rosebud mouth, and red hair that you could actually comb, who came to live with the little girl and her doll in 1956. Best friends for more than fifty years, they are both rather fragile now. But they are happy to be beloved friends of the little girl, who is not so little anymore.