First Grade, First Day

Toy Horse (detail)

Following Mrs. Brown’s instructions, we reached into our school bags and got out our new Big Chief blue-lined manila paper tablets, along with our giant First Grade pencils - the fat ones intended to fit snugly into clumsy First Grade fists - each fitted with a bubble-gum pink eraser the size of a gumdrop, anticipating an abundance of First Grade mistakes. These we placed in front of us, the pencils laid to rest in smooth grooves cut neatly into the tops of our desks. We would need them later, Mrs. Brown said. 

For now, we would use our colors, big cigar-sized crayons in the standard eight-pack of primary and secondary hues, plus brown and black. Take out the red one, and do as I do.
 


Open your tablets, she said, her taught straight back turned to us, her hand raised to the blackboard, her voice as crisp as her starched plaid cotton dress. We were going to learn to write today. We were going to learn to pay attention. I did so, or tried to, distracted as I was by the surprising display unfolding before me.
 


Mrs. Brown was writing in red. And she wasn’t writing words, either. I knew that much right away. She was drawing a picture. In colored chalk!



Crayons I understood. Chalk, too. We’d seen it in kindergarten, and at home in the sewing room. Sometimes Grandma let us use it to make hop-scotch squares on the sidewalk. Chalk was white, sometimes light yellow in grown-up grades, but never in colors so rich and vivid. And now Mrs. Brown was writing with it, drawing a long red box in the center of the board, bleeding deep, shiny lines as bold and tangy as strawberry Kool-Aid.

Do as I do, she said again, and I did, mimicking her bright chalk shapes on my page with poor waxy imitations in red Crayola. Mrs. Brown was drawing a wagon! Red rectangle. Black circles for wheels. Brown shaft. Green handle.  I was drawing a wagon, too. My picture looked like hers.

Mrs. Brown wrote a large red S at the top of my paper. Satisfactory, she said. That meant Good, she said. It didn’t look as good to me, though, not any more, now that she had written right on the front of my nice drawing. I looked back up at the board. Nobody put a big S on her picture. Now they didn’t look the same at all.

Lisa, the girl who sat in the space next to me, had drawn a glorious picture, far better in my estimation than my own. Hers was a dark black rectangle filled with circles and triangles and spirals of yellow and green, with a zig-zag red fringe border, blue-purple wheels and a bright orange pull. Lisa was very pleased with her work. Her wagon was different from everyone else’s. It was very different from the one in the middle of the blackboard.

Mrs. Brown did not think it was Good. She marked Lisa’s paper with a broad, cursive U, looping like a deep red cut across the middle of Lisa’s wagon. Unsatisfactory, Mrs. Brown said, making a big frown. Lisa explained that her picture was prettier than the plain red wagon on the chalkboard. Mrs. Brown said that Lisa would have to learn to follow directions. That’s what First Grade is for.

Lisa took her paper back to her desk, buried her face in her arms, and cried for the rest of the school day. She earned many more U’s that year.

I liked Lisa. I liked her very much.

* Originally published in the Birmingham Arts Journal, Volume 4, Issue 3, © 2007, Birmingham Arts Association. Jim Reed, Editor

Watch Your Language.

I loved Red Skelton – even had the privilege to meet him once – and I completely understand his choice to eschew the use of profanity. For Mr. Skelton, it was an absolute rule: “If you can’t be funny without profanity,” he told me (me, and about 10,000 others in attendance that evening),  “Chances are you aren't very funny to begin with.”

Dirty Mind

He could be right, but I sure do laugh at a colorful turn of phrase every now and then. Naughty is naughty, whether it’s George Carlin’s list of The Words You Can't Say on TV, or Red’s Mean Widdle Kid - and in the hands of gifted performers, the entire spectrum of naughty can be darned funny indeed.

Clem Kadiddlehopper’s gentle tenet notwithstanding, I confess to my own occasional indulgence in expletive expression, and confirm my unwillingness to remove an entire phalanx of communication from my creative armamentarium, either visually or verbally.

I may choose to limit what I lift from my personal lexicon, just as my wife chooses colors from her palette of paints – but I do so to enhance my work, not because I feel like I'm getting away with anything.

Not everything people do is clean and pretty. Redd Foxx used to say, "There's a reason why I use words like $%*#, and %^@&. . . People do." Such functional activities can certainly be described in non-profane terms, appropriately and to great effect. I applaud anyone creative enough, talented enough, or even virtuous enough to do that. I also applaud those who are creative enough, talented enough, and virtuous enough use scatological terms effectively, unvarnished and (sic) un-adulterated.

There's a reason why I use such language, and occasionally such imagery. These words reside in their own area of the brain, apart from our regular vocabulary. (I find that special anatomical treatment noteworthy, and endlessly intriguing.) Employed thoughtfully, they add to the content, the depth, the meaning, the clarity, and the humor of my work, as well as my daily conversation.

Children understand profanity and its appropriate use before they're two years old. They even know to modify their language among differing social groups, absorbing cues from their social environment, and directly the admonitions of parents and teachers.

After a half century of such training, even I am beginning to catch on. When I speak to church groups, elementary students, a barroom full of Marines, or even a motley group of writers or artists, I find I am quite capable of adjusting the content of my presentation accordingly. 

By the time they could speak in sentences, both of my sons understood that the word ‘dam’ meant a wall of rocks and mud that held back water in the creek, and something people say sometimes when they are upset. Their preschool teacher once pulled me aside to report that one of the boys said ‘dammit’ out loud in her class that day. She assured me that it wasn’t something he had learned in daycare, since none of her teachers spoke that way to the children, and she hoped the incident wouldn't reflect poorly on the school.

“Don't worry,” I told her. “He learned it from me.”

Her relief melted into shocked amusement. “I’ve been teaching little ones for 16 years, and you're the first parent who has ever admitted that!”

Why wouldn't I? I want my kids to be functionally literate as they navigate their way through life. Profanity, from the vulgar to the refined, will permeate their experience in society, in popular media, in literature, in their business and personal interactions.

Ignorance is seldom an asset in the real world.

When my kids were a little older, around 6 or 7, they wanted to see a Jackie Chan movie (which I was assured would be ‘family friendly’), to celebrate their advancement to yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do.  Chan was as jovial and entertaining as ever, though his partner relied more on verbal assaults to subdue bad guys than his martial arts skills.

On the way back to the car, my seven year old asked the obvious question: “Dad, why do grown-ups say ‘bullshit’ so much?” – a query that instantly brought back the taste of the ivory soap that my grandmother used to wash out my mouth, the first and only time I uttered that word in her presence. Must’ve been just about his age…

“Dad?”

“What, son?”

“Why do grown-ups say ‘bullshit’ so much? That guy sure said it a lot in the movie.”

I tried not to laugh at his innocent question, or his earnest sincerity - grateful that his great-grandmother was nowhere within earshot. Couldn't help smiling, though.

“Well, that’s kind of an adult word for nonsense, son. Grown-ups say that whenever they think of something that it worthless. I guess they could say ‘Big piles of marshmallow crème!’, but that stuff is too tasty. See what I mean?”

His little brother giggled and mimicked: “Big piles of marshmallow creeeme!”

The older boy thought for a minute, furrowing his brow as he climbed into the car, and buckled his seatbelt.

Sunflowers

“That’s silly,” he said, finally. “That stuff is not either worthless. People could put it in their compost pile. Then it would grow yummy vegetables.”

That it would, my boy. 
That it would.