Dear Life

they did not care how my teaching was going or what I had done before I came to work at the San. It wasn’t that they were rude—they passed me the butter (it was called butter but it was really orange-streaked margarine, colored in the kitchen as was the only legal way in those days) and they warned me off the shepherd’s pie which they said had groundhog in it. It was just that whatever happened in places they didn’t know or to people they didn’t know or in times they didn’t know had to be discounted. It got in their way and under their skin. They turned off the radio news every chance they got and tried to get music.
    “Dance with a dolly with a hole in her stockin’ …”
    Both nurses and aides disliked the CBC which I had been brought up to believe was bringing culture to the hinterlands. Yet they were in awe of Dr. Fox partly because he had read so many books.
    They also said that there was nobody like him to tear a strip off you if he felt like it.
    I couldn’t figure out if they felt there was a connection between reading a lot of books and tearing a strip off.
    Usual notions of pedagogy out of place here. Some of these children will reenter the world or system and some will not. Better not a lot of stress. That is testing memorizing classifying nonsense
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    Disregard whole grade business entirely. Those who need to can catch up later on or do without. Actually very simple skills, set of facts, etc., necessary for Going into the World. What about Superior Children so-called? Disgusting term. If they are smart in questionable academic way they can easily catch up
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    Forget rivers of South America, likewise Magna Carta
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    Drawing Music Stories preferred
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    Games Okay but watch for overexcitement or too much competitiveness
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    Challenge to keep between stress and boredom. Boredom curse of hospitalization
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    If Matron can’t supply what you need sometimes Janitor will have it stashed away somewhere
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    Bon Voyage
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    The numbers of children who showed up varied. Fifteen, or down to half a dozen. Mornings only, from nine o’clocktill noon, including rest times. Children were kept away if their temperature had risen or if they were undergoing tests. When they were present they were quiet and tractable but not particularly interested. They had caught on right away that this was a pretend school where they were free of all requirements to learn anything, just as they were free of times-tables and memory work. This freedom didn’t make them uppity, it didn’t make them bored in any troublesome way, just docile and dreamy. They sang rounds softly. They played X’s and O’s. There was a shadow of defeat over the improvised classroom.
    I decided to take the doctor at his word. Or some of his words, such as the ones about boredom being the enemy.
    In the janitor’s cubbyhole I had seen a world globe. I asked to have it brought out. I started on simple geography. The oceans, the continents, the climates. Why not the winds and the currents? The countries and the cities? The Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn? Why not, after all, the rivers of South America?
    Some children had learned such things before, but they had nearly forgotten. The world beyond the lake and the forest had dropped away. I thought they cheered up, as if making friends again, with whatever they used to know. I didn’t dump everything on them at once, of course. And I had to go easy with the ones who had never learned such things in their lives because of getting sick too soon.
    But that was all right. It could be a game. I separated them into teams, got them calling out answers while I darted here and there with the pointer. I was careful not to let the excitement go on too long. But one day the doctor walked in, fresh from morning surgery, and I was caught. I could not stop things cold, but I tried to dampen the competition. He satdown, looking somewhat tired and withdrawn. He made no objection. After a few moments he began to join in the game, calling out quite ridiculous answers, names not just mistaken but imaginary. Then gradually he let his voice die down. Down, down, first to a mumble, then to a whisper, then till nothing could be heard at all. Nothing. In this way, with this absurdity, he took control of the room. The whole class took to mouthing, in order to imitate him. Their eyes were fixed on his lips.
    Suddenly he let out a low growl that had them all laughing.
    “Why the deuce is everybody looking at me? Is that