Durham, NC
Clever Pets
Most of my students are suspended precisely, awkwardly, between childhood and adolescence. Many of the girls are thirteen but look seventeen. Their bodies -- with the slim hips and high breasts models envy -- along with their already formidable skills in social pettifoggery, cloak-and-dagger friendship, and high melodrama, make the boys seem like suburban dogs by comparison: endlessly scratching their misshapen bodies; usually play-fighting and sometimes really fighting; blindly loyal and guileless; interested mainly in splaying themselves over couches for as long as possible, and above all, in eating nauseous quantities of food.
This is nothing new. Girls have forever lapped boys in the maturity race, and I've quickly internalized the idea that scrawny, pointy-headed Jake, in his shin-length 'shorts' and his t-shirts eleven sizes too large, is the same age as Maria, who already writes better than most adults and has the inquisitive self-possession of, say, a college scholarship student from Copenhagen.
No, I accept that a girl's wit and persona are honed, that her sexual awareness is broad, alert. It is no shock to observe Cathy as she deploys ever more sophisticated ways to humiliate and traumatize LoriAnne. Cathy often ropes other girls into her schemes, acquiring their unintentional abetment like an infanta whose powers never need utterance in order to win her subjects' fealty. Her invidiousness has an esoteric, almost shamanistic quality to it. But a swift reminder of her youth came the other day at the end of school. Walking by the kitchen before staff meeting, I glimpsed Cathy and Hazel sitting on stools, having cheddar goldfish crackers and juice. The Afterschool caregiver had parceled out these snacks in dixie cups and on paper napkins, with what appeared to be an equal count of goldfish for each girl.
So they may not act so young, but they are not so old either. They require unflagging social guidance and modeling ('babysitting' if you're feeling cranky) and they'll gab, flirt, and flutter for all forty-five minutes of class if I don't hold sway from minute one. They don't care that I might be talking with someone else, perhaps even in mid-sentence. "AdamAdamAdam" they will say, and thrust an object or themselves directly at me, or urgently need me to tell them how long it will take to microwave their burrito. I don't know. "AdamAdamAdam."
When I'm feeling abnormally tired -- I say abnormally because I have been tired every waking minute since late August -- I get short and irritable with them. That's when I take a deep breath in the staff room and resolve to regard all of them, not just the boys, neither as history students nor even as people, but instead as stunningly clever housepets. By that measure, they are remarkable creatures.
