We have been prosperous people, but careful and lucky. We have everything we need; decent housing, basic cars that work, three pairs of jeans each, no debt. We can help our kids financially, and we live on the most wonderful piece of space in the entire world. We try to make our footprint on this earth as small as possible, but yet it is huge. So we give away as much as possible of our time and money and products and ideas.
This year, as I began working in a primary class at Lacoochee elementary school, I started small. Each week I brought in something interesting to do, to make,to explore, to cook, and to read. This has been great, and I have come to know these kids quite well. The kids come out to greet me each Tuesday and help me trundle in with my voluminous bags of supplies.
The group teacher really wanted to take these kids OUT to see some things they had never discovered. I was open to funding a field trip to wherever. Turned out that the whole primary department had to go on whatever trip, a hundred kids! O.K., a hundred kids.. I went to the principal to propose this and immediately the school went into action, they got the busses, signed up for the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa (an hour away). I signed the check with the proviso that this contribution must be anonymous. My group teacher really wanted me to come, and she really wanted me to be the keeper of a couple of really wild kids. O.K.
When I arrived in the classroom today many children told me they had awakened in the night thinking about the day to come. Some of them were excited to think that for this special occasion they had a lunch packed from home! Most of the others relied on the lunches packed by the school (more than 90% free lunches). No one was absent this day. They each picked up their identification badges to be worn on lanyards on their necks. They are good and patient children.
We had two busses. Our group was on a bubble gum pink bus, ready and waiting, belching fumes. The various classes moved promptly into the busses, and I worked to make sure that every child was seat belted in (clearly not a priority for these kids nor their teachers!) My seatmate was Lorenzo, the little guy who made the papers last week for bringing a gun to school. Lorenzo, tiny and adorably cute, must not have had a bath in weeks. The odors emanating from him almost made me gag.
I am thinking of the last busses I have been on; lovely soft seats, coolers of fresh cold water, seat belts arranged so that one could actually use them. But, I am here in the trenches, nothing but basic, lots of directives telling us that there is positively NO EATING OR DRINKING ON THIS BUS!! Fortunately, the trip to MOSI is less than an hour long.
Lorenzo is so small he can barely see out the window, pinned like a moth to wax by the tightened seatbelt. I get out a piece of paper from my purse and start folding an origami creation. He is entranced as this becomes a cat. Completed, I give this to him and for the rest of the trip he grips this with his fingers, making the whiskers jump.
When we arrive, we have to wait in the bus for way too long. (a hundred kids have to be processed!) The lunches are put into bins and then we go stand in more lines waiting to be processed like hogs. Then we can be free to visit the hurricane exhibit - way cool!!. Now it's time to have lunch, more lines. The kids gulp their lunches so we can go see the monsters of the deep exhibit before the IMAX show. The kids, at first, just run around the exhibit hall, yelling and pushing all the buttons. They cannot focus on anything. I see out of the corners of my eyes, regular families with kids who stop in front of the explanatory signs and discuss these with their kids. These families look alarmed as they see this swarm of Lacoochee killer bees spending seconds, wreaking havoc, moving on with absolutely no understanding. Two or three kids in my group come to me to ask what's this or that. But they don't really want to know, at least not yet.
My group teacher, CareyAnne, says, nevermind, this is their first experience. One has to begin somewhere, and this is fine. She's right.
At the IMAX presentation, I know I am in Hell. Lorenzo, stinking to high heaven from old shoes and who knows how many bath free days, sits beside me screaming in anticipation, saying he is scared, dizzy, needs a drink, has to use the restroom, and kicks the seat in front of him. On my other side sits Brittany who also wants to use the restroom and otherwise whines and tattles about this and that. This is really an interesting movie! But I am thinking about how in the world can such a movie make any sense to these kids? There is this Oh! Wow! component, the hugeness of the IMAX format.
Where do you start? On the way back, Lorenzo soon conks out and takes a nap on the seat beside me. Marisol, across the aisle, is chatty. Marisol is the brightest kid in the group. She has big dark eyes that take in everything. She starts out by telling me that she can read anything on this bus. Which of course she can: "No eating or drinking on this bus!" "Pull cord in case of emergency" and all the rest. Turns out that this child is one of the youngest in the group and had her seventh birthday in January. She is big for seven, and by now a really competent reader. I tell her that I have thought her to be older. She grins, showing me the tell-tale tooth loss of an early seven-year-old. I also notice the cavities in her mouth. Marisol has two devoted parents, many siblings, too. Her parents speak only Spanish but they have many books at home. Her dad works 'in farming', which I interpret to mean that he is a picker of produce.
Marisol has a spark, no doubt. I want to save these kids, give them a vision of what they could be. What can be done for Lorenzo?
To understand poverty in our country one has to have some of the experiences of knowing it. It's not enough to just know the numbers. I am trying to get even a little understanding of all this. Today, more than ever, I realize that the gulf is so huge between the poor and the middle class in America, I don't know how we can bridge it. What I do know is that all our kids are worthy lof the best attention we can give them.
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