Partly Cloudy, 64°
Sources report that area 7-year-old Hector Einhorn has recently discovered the wonders of reading and imagination. With just a flip of the page, the young boy can leave his humdrum everyday life and explore a magical land where his ability to kill at will is limited only by the bounds of imagination.
“I love to read,” said Einhorn, paging through a classic Clancy paperback. “Sometimes at school I get bored because the kids are annoying and the teachers are dumb and I hate them all. In books, the bad guys all die.”
Einhorn’s teachers universally praised his advanced reading level. “While the other kids are off horsing around, Hector’s always got his nose buried in some slasher or another,” said first-grade teacher Wanda Styles. “When Hector really gets into a book, his eyes light up and he does this weird twitch. He’s in his own little world!”
Added Styles, “He seems to really like books where teachers are slaughtered en masse.”
“Reading has been a godsend for our son,” said Einhorn’s mother Rose Halloway. “Before he learned to read, he was so hyperactive. We couldn’t leave him alone without him trashing the house or cutting legs off the neighbors’ cats. But now he just reads violent fiction and gets real quiet. I love my son.”
Einhorn reports he is already reading at a ninth-grade level. “I like the ones where there’s a kid and he fixes problems in his life,” said Einhorn. “I like to find the pages where someone is bleeding and mark them with color tabs.”
“You know, color tabs,” he added. “Those things, those little color things, like rectangles, you know? They’re sticky on one side. You put them in books. There’s got to be a better word for that. So weird.”
Continued Einhorn, “Sticky notes? But that’s not really it, those are those tan things. Color tabs are real narrow. One end is, like, transparent? C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. Here, I’ll draw you a picture.”
The picture Einhorn drew looked like this:
“Man, it really seems like there should be a word for those,” said Einhorn. “They’re very common. People use them all the time. Bookmarks? That doesn’t really do it.”
“I agree,” said this reporter. “Frankly, it’s a real marketing blunder, if you ask me. How can a customer find something he can’t even describe? I once asked for ‘sticky tabs’ at Staples and nobody knew what I meant. Very frustrating.”
“I totally feel you,” said Styles, Einhorn’s teacher, from before. “When I submitted my supplies budget last year, I put down ‘color tabs’ and had to explain to the Board of Directors that runs this charter school exactly what that meant. There should be a word for them. It’s crazy that there isn’t.”
She clarified that she had come into the room to bring Einhorn back to class (I had only been granted 15 minutes for the interview; an evaluator hired by the charter board was observing Ms. Styles’ class, and she was taking no chances of being perceived as at all lax. Discipline was big at this charter school. It created a highly regimented student body, but at what cost? I would have occasion to reflect on the impact of such a strict environment on rebellious young minds like Einhorn’s in the years to come), but had been drawn into the whole color tab conversation.
“Are you guys talking about color tabs?” asked Einhorn’s mom, who had dropped by for her parent-teacher conference and had arrived a bit early (she was not a bad parent; if anything, she loved her son too much, was too willing to overlook the darkness that lay b’neath the fair facade of her prince, her darling boy). “I hate that there isn’t a word for that. So frustrating. By the way, Hector, I bought you a new book. It’s called ‘The Old Testament.’ I think you’ll get a real kick out of it.”
They laughed, mother and son and teacher, together. And I laughed with them, for I, too, had been taken in. A tragedy is not a singular incident that lives encased in one minute, one hour, one day, one lifetime. It is a collection of a series of moments, a rich tapestry of wrongs unremitted and blind eyes turned. Behind every devil is the mother who suckled him. And the father who taught him to believe. And the disease that took him away. And the candlelight that warmed the tavern where they met. And there was the school that shaped him, and the governors who approved it, and the voters who said that it was good. And the papers that they read. And the moments that they shared. And the reporter who was faced with a terrible truth and chose to turn away.
This reporter turned away.
The future is not fixed, but fluid. We cannot see it but we can shape it. “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” We are frightened and we are small. But we need not be alone.
Fin.
“I love to read,” said Einhorn, paging through a classic Clancy paperback. “Sometimes at school I get bored because the kids are annoying and the teachers are dumb and I hate them all. In books, the bad guys all die.”
Einhorn’s teachers universally praised his advanced reading level. “While the other kids are off horsing around, Hector’s always got his nose buried in some slasher or another,” said first-grade teacher Wanda Styles. “When Hector really gets into a book, his eyes light up and he does this weird twitch. He’s in his own little world!”
Added Styles, “He seems to really like books where teachers are slaughtered en masse.”
“Reading has been a godsend for our son,” said Einhorn’s mother Rose Halloway. “Before he learned to read, he was so hyperactive. We couldn’t leave him alone without him trashing the house or cutting legs off the neighbors’ cats. But now he just reads violent fiction and gets real quiet. I love my son.”
Einhorn reports he is already reading at a ninth-grade level. “I like the ones where there’s a kid and he fixes problems in his life,” said Einhorn. “I like to find the pages where someone is bleeding and mark them with color tabs.”
“You know, color tabs,” he added. “Those things, those little color things, like rectangles, you know? They’re sticky on one side. You put them in books. There’s got to be a better word for that. So weird.”
Continued Einhorn, “Sticky notes? But that’s not really it, those are those tan things. Color tabs are real narrow. One end is, like, transparent? C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. Here, I’ll draw you a picture.”
The picture Einhorn drew looked like this:
“Man, it really seems like there should be a word for those,” said Einhorn. “They’re very common. People use them all the time. Bookmarks? That doesn’t really do it.”
“I agree,” said this reporter. “Frankly, it’s a real marketing blunder, if you ask me. How can a customer find something he can’t even describe? I once asked for ‘sticky tabs’ at Staples and nobody knew what I meant. Very frustrating.”
“I totally feel you,” said Styles, Einhorn’s teacher, from before. “When I submitted my supplies budget last year, I put down ‘color tabs’ and had to explain to the Board of Directors that runs this charter school exactly what that meant. There should be a word for them. It’s crazy that there isn’t.”
She clarified that she had come into the room to bring Einhorn back to class (I had only been granted 15 minutes for the interview; an evaluator hired by the charter board was observing Ms. Styles’ class, and she was taking no chances of being perceived as at all lax. Discipline was big at this charter school. It created a highly regimented student body, but at what cost? I would have occasion to reflect on the impact of such a strict environment on rebellious young minds like Einhorn’s in the years to come), but had been drawn into the whole color tab conversation.
“Are you guys talking about color tabs?” asked Einhorn’s mom, who had dropped by for her parent-teacher conference and had arrived a bit early (she was not a bad parent; if anything, she loved her son too much, was too willing to overlook the darkness that lay b’neath the fair facade of her prince, her darling boy). “I hate that there isn’t a word for that. So frustrating. By the way, Hector, I bought you a new book. It’s called ‘The Old Testament.’ I think you’ll get a real kick out of it.”
They laughed, mother and son and teacher, together. And I laughed with them, for I, too, had been taken in. A tragedy is not a singular incident that lives encased in one minute, one hour, one day, one lifetime. It is a collection of a series of moments, a rich tapestry of wrongs unremitted and blind eyes turned. Behind every devil is the mother who suckled him. And the father who taught him to believe. And the disease that took him away. And the candlelight that warmed the tavern where they met. And there was the school that shaped him, and the governors who approved it, and the voters who said that it was good. And the papers that they read. And the moments that they shared. And the reporter who was faced with a terrible truth and chose to turn away.
This reporter turned away.
The future is not fixed, but fluid. We cannot see it but we can shape it. “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” We are frightened and we are small. But we need not be alone.
Fin.
