On Friday I traveled to Manhattan’s east side where Daughter teaches early childhood special education. My assignment was to pick a book to read to the students ranging in age from six to eight with varied attention spans and limitations. I chose Big Dog, Little Dog and The Teacher from the Black Lagoon, both from my personal extensive library of children’s stories left behind by the childhood of my children.
The kids were adorable, respectful and participatory. After the first book, I asked for a show of hands as to who had heard it before. A few students raised their hands. One of them said he wanted to ask me a question and I said to fire away – I was an expert on Big Dog, Little Dog. He said, “What’s that brown circle on your face?” I told him it was a birthmark and that lots of people have them, mine just happens to be on my cheek so it’s hard to miss. Another boy with very thick glasses popped up next to my face for a closer look. “Oh, yeah, now I see it. That was a good book.”
I fell in love with all of them.
After the school day ended, Daughter whisked me from the Upper East Side down to Soho where she has artwork on display in a gallery. Then we prowled the Union Square Holiday Market, a yearly tradition wherein Daughter notes something I loved but didn’t buy and then goes back another day to get it for me. We had souvlaki pitas at one place and gourmet tea and bread pudding at another. We walked a distance in the cold winter air that for me was approximately a thousand blocks but for Daughter was probably a few short of her average. At nightfall, we landed in her apartment where she showed me how to use my digital camera. It was a perfect day.
Now it’s the weekend and I should be studying for my finals next week but instead I got sucked into The Outsiders again, one of the few movies that in my opinion actually does justice to the book it was based on. The other one that gets my vote is To Kill a Mockingbird. Interestingly, both books were presumed to have been written by men when they were first published; Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Hinton’s publisher suggested using initials instead of Susan Eloise because it was feared no one would believe a woman could write such a convincing saga of male adolescence and alienation. Harper Lee’s publisher also did not promote the fact that the author of such searing social commentary was female. Which is all reminiscent of that early women’s lib poster that said, “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in high heels.”
The Outsiders was written in 1967 making this year its 40th birthday. The book’s theme of social outcasts and class warfare among teens in rural Oklahoma set the groundwork for a genre to follow, everything from American Graffiti and Grease right up to A Bronx Tale and Friday Night Lights. Not that adolescence owns the market on social insecurity and rights of birth. Fitting in everywhere may be a common desire but rarely is it a realistic one. What we need mostly are not people just like us but people who understand and accept us as we are. Like the brave and special children in Daughter’s class, and all the big dogs and little dogs everywhere.
Daughter’s Fotos taken at Fresh Dance 2007 SUNY New Paltz ask us all Who Are We?
acrobats
dancers
musicians
who knows?