2002
Noah’s second day of Big School. Mom took him as far as the door of the classroom. He didn’t like it when she bent down to kiss him goodbye and he didn’t like it when Miss Jonas told him to hurry along and hang up his bag.
His hook was still there, and his stars with their 5 points. That was something.
‘At least the sky didn’t fall on our heads, hey, Noah?’ That’s what Mom always said when ‘things could be worse’.
He knew, from his first day, that a bell would ring soon. Miss Jonas called it break time. As soon as it rang he could go to his hook, take down his bag and open his lunchbox. Mom said she’d packed a surprise for him for today, but he’d have to wait to find out what it was.
He waited, all the way through painting shapes with potatoes instead of paintbrushes and putting lucky beans into cups and taking them out again and doing interesting things with Plasticene. At least Miss Jonas said they were interesting, but all the colours had been squished together and the clay was a browny mess, so all the things he made looked the same.
When the bell rang, everyone got up and started rushing to their bags, but Miss Jonas said, ‘Children, children, back to your places, please.’ She said she was teaching them how to behave for when they got to Grade 1. They had to learn how to wait, and how to take turns, and ‘no pushing or shoving’. When they were all quiet they could get up and ‘walk quietly, please’ to their bags and take out their lunchboxes.
Inside his lunchbox Noah found 5 little sandwiches cut into small stars, each with 5 points. There was one cheese and one pnb (that’s what Mom called peanut butter) and one strawberry jam and two just-butter. For the first time on Noah’s second day it felt like things were getting better, and at least that was something.
A girl was sitting next to him, the one from yesterday who said she wasn’t scared of big school. She was wearing black shiny shoes and her socks had frills around the tops.
‘Swap?’ she asked.
Before he could say he didn’t know what ‘swap’ meant, she’d put her hand into his lunchbox and took a butter-only sandwich, the one he was saving for last. Then she put a bit of sausage where his butter-only was supposed to be and smiled.
‘My feet are sore,’ she said, but he didn’t care. He wanted to kick her shiny black shoes with his new red tekkies, but Mom said you shouldn’t hit girls.
So he counted to 5 and wished Miss Jonas would clap her hands and say, ‘Tidy up children, no crumbs please’, but instead she walked over and looked down on him and said, ‘Come along, Noah, you must eat up.’ He stared at her, and he hated her, and he hated ShinyShoe girl and her stupid sausage.
When Miss Jonas’s hands finally went Clap! Clap! he liked her again because eating was over and he could go to his hook and hang his bag and touch the points of his star.
‘Don’t worry,’ Mom said. ‘Soon you’ll make lots of friends.’
He wished he could make just one friend, but when they all went outside to play on the swings and in the sandpit and on the jungle gym everyone had someone to play with except him. So he sat on a swing and used his feet to push off. His legs were long, so he was able to go higher and higher, and at least that was also something.
Then, Clap! Clap! Miss Jonas went again and it was time to go inside and do stuff and wait for the bell that said soon Mom would be there to collect him.