Hometown

Last year, on the last day of school, Ian had just had a little bout of illness, so I went with him into school to gather up his things, and also to claim some Pokemon paraphernalia that a school administrator had told him he could take home from the lost-and-found if it remained unclaimed on the last day of school.  He went into the classroom to say goodbye to his classmates, and when he arrived, they cheered.  His teacher hadn't noticed him come into the room, so he sneaked up from behind and threw his arms around her waist in a kind of surprise-hug-attack.  I was moved by the small-town-folksiness of our not-so-tiny town (24,000), and somewhat relieved, where many parents might be concerned, instead, at Ian's lack of sophistication or self-restraint, in the face of an outburst of affection.  When I was a boy, the Boston Public Schools was not a place where you threw your arms around your teacher, especially in a sneak-attack, and it certainly wasn't a place where your classmates cheered at your arrival.

On Friday, the last school-day before Christmas vacation, I went for the afternoon party, spending my time primarily in Daniel's class, but also stopping by Ian's.  I encouraged Ian, quietly, to go wish his teacher a Merry Christmas before we left to go home, but he didn't carry it out in exactly the way I had imagined.  As with last year's teacher, he sneaked up on this one, grabbed her hand from behind, started pumping it up and down, and sang in rhythm with the hand-shake:  "I wish you a Merry Christmas, I wish you a Merry Christmas, I wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year."  She seemed to appreciate the outburst.

As we left school, we had a dilemma:  Amy had sent a card and a box of chocolates with Daniel for the boys' bus driver, but since I had dropped Daniel off at school in the morning, and I was driving him home, he wouldn't have any occasion to give the present to his driver.  I thought the solution was simple:  we just go find  the boys' bus as we head out to the parking lot to go home, and give the driver his present.  But Ian reassured me that their bus is always the last one to arrive, and that it wouldn't be along any time soon.  I was inclined to believe him; the end-of-the-day school  bell rang as we walked across the school grounds, and  there was no sign of their bus, or any other bus aside from a few mini-buses.

So as we were playing outside in the yard, I kept an eye on the school-bus, with the card and present at easy reach.  When the school bus came, at its normal time, I waved down the bus driver, and he stopped and opened his window, but it didn't occur to me why.  He wasn't opening it for me to give him something; he opened it and immediately reached into his private stash and produced three small sandwich bags, all apparently identically packed with candies, as his own present to the children.  He gave us three bags, including Madeleine among the beneficiaries, even though she's still in preschool and doesn't ride the bus.

And Ian pointed out that all of the candies were gluten-free, some explicitly marked as such.  Ian assumed that  the driver had gone out of his way to get gluten-free candy for our boys.  But that didn't make sense to me; surely the boys' bus driver wouldn't know that they had a gluten intolerance... But it turned out that he did know.  Somehow Ian had told him, at some  point.

Again, in my childhood hometown of Boston, where "busing" was a dirty word and we had assigned bus monitors to keep the peace, it was inconceivable that the bus driver would have any way of knowing of  anyone's dietary restrictions, let alone buy candy for them that accommodates those limitations.

I don't understand what makes for  a nice town.  It's possible that the relative remoteness of our hokey little state has something to do with it.  It's also probably partly city-versus-town, and something about the particular town itself.   But whatever it is, I'm glad that the children have this town as part of their childhood.

(December 22, 2012)