DANNY
I woke up this morning feeling better than I’ve felt in my life. Most importantly, having all these people at the FBI working to find a way to help me get Mom and the girls away from Ratso. And having a teacher help us is so good. Second, for the first time in my life, I’m looking forward to school – especially to see Sam and Ella.
Sam held a guitar in both hands and gently handed it to me, and said, “Ella said you needed a guitar, and here is one you can borrow until it can find an owner. It was in the school’s storeroom. I will probably call you this evening with the rest of the Danny team, so until then, have another good wacky day.” He patted me on the shoulder. I really liked it that Sam called all the people helping me, ‘Danny’s team’. I turned around just as Ella arrived. I held up the guitar and thanked her for telling Sam about my need.
She replied, “So, I hope you can join us tomorrow after school. Did you get off the tram?” I nodded. “I guess you were in the other car. I usually sit in the second car, so join me there if you want to.” Ella seemed a little nervous about inviting me to be with her. I told her I’d go to the second car tomorrow, and she relaxed as she gave me a little card with her phone number and text number and said, “Call me if you can’t join me, because I would worry. Our class is having a science class first period and now…”
The music from the Ragamuffins started, and Ella again dragged me over to meet her dad and see her little sister. The music had just started, so I could only shake hands with her dad, who had a little darker skin than Ella. He was a handsome guy in jeans and a pinkish polo shirt. Angie, the kindergartner, had a big, welcoming smile and reached up, taking one of my hands and Ella’s other hand. We started the day with a song that seemed everyone knew but me, that started with “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, zip-a-dee-ay, my oh my, what a wonderful day.” I learned later that it was another really old song from the last century. I’m sure the old, grumpy people in my super sober Mississippi school would condemn all this as a complete waste of time because education is serious business. I’m sure I was more open to learn something after the wake-up singing and dancing than I was after my old sour march into the school building with a bunch of grouchy teachers and sad-looking kids. After more dancing and singing, I was glad that Ella’s dad was really enjoying himself and singing along with everybody else. When the music stopped, he held out his hand and said, “You must be Danny. I’m Mark Haloran, and Ella has told her mom and me that you are a refugee from our most conservative state. I’m happy to meet you, and I hope Ella has been a pleasant guide.”
I nodded and replied, “Yeah, she’s really helped me a lot. This school is so different from back home. It’s like being released from prison and being thrown into a fun garden.” I was surprised that I called Flowers, ‘back home’. I never wanted to go back there in my life. Just thinking about it made me all tighten up.
Angie piped up, “And I like you, Danny, even if you do talk funny.” All three of us laughed. Mark took Angie’s hand, and he let her lead him to her classroom. Ella and I headed to our big classroom and were greeted by a young man who looked like he’d just graduated from high school. He introduced himself as Josh Speers and informed us that he had just graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had a Ph.D. in Physics, so he could be called Dr. Speers, but was fine with Josh. He was also a graduate of Two Thousand Smiles. I had even heard of MIT and knew it was considered one of the best universities in the world. He told us that he volunteered to teach at our school as part of his two-year community service, which all young people, male and female, must complete after graduating from high school or college. He concluded by saying, “Eventually, I want to work in Kenya, Africa, where my mother is from. I’m still learning their language, and I thought I’d learn how to teach at a school like this one. So, you are all going to help me to become a teacher. Are you okay with that?” We all clapped and yelled, “Yes, Great, We’re the best…” and other positive and boisterous comments.
Josh said that he wanted to get into microbiology and physics. He went on to tell us that it included atomic theory, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and quantum mechanics. I looked around the room and was relieved to notice that I wasn’t the only one who looked confused. Josh said. “So first, please place your right hand on the little desktop on the side of your chair. Now raise your pinkie finger up and down. Now, keep doing this for a few moments and ask yourself, ‘How am I doing this. How am I able to raise and lower my finger like this?”
“Now, I hope you have come up with several answers to yourself, ‘How do I do this. Your little finger is tired now, so let it stop. And how do you do that, too?” He looked around the room and, with his eyes, seemed to meet each one of us. At least that is what I felt when he looked at me. “Now, who would like to tell us what he or she is thinking about this question?”
Joe Jackson held up his hand, and Josh nodded. Joe said, “I think I have an invisible little genie running around in my mind and my body and waiting for my mind/brain to tell him what to do, and he does it. Oh, I really love that helpful little guy.” Joe smiled smugly and looked around the room as everyone laughed. I wondered if the other fifth-grade cohort had a class clown like Joe.
Maria didn’t wait and said quickly, “That’s just the way god made us, we think something and god makes it happen. Maybe Joe’s really right, his little invisible genie is an angel that helps us and is sent by god.” Two students from the other 5th grade cohort gave similar answers.
Olivia sang, “And, and an invisible little devil is trying to knock us down, and sometimes I think that my little devil has an evil power that makes me a cripple and my angel keeps me strong enough to smile and move my little finger – not, uh, not as good as you all, but good enough.” It must have taken her five minutes to tell us her thoughts, and everyone was quiet as mice. I felt sure that if Olivia were in a classroom in Mississippi, the other kids would have laughed at her. I was so glad to see everyone, even Joe. Quietly respect her.
Josh shocked me by saying, “You know, I think you all have wonderfully true ideas. Joe, the way you talked about a genie, reminds me of Albert Einstein’s famous E=MC²* or ‘energy equals matter times the speed of light squared. Oh, you all have heard of Einstein, haven’t you?” Joe glanced around the room, scrunched up his face, raised both of his arms like a band leader encouraging everyone to join him, and I think everyone except me let out a loud, “DUH!!”
Josh laughed and said, “Now I know you are all awake and informed. And I want you to know that I picked that little finger exercise from a fellow named Jesus featured in a 21st century blog that attempted to tell readers about what the author dreamed about how Jesus really wanted his believers to think about him. Anyway, I enjoyed the blog and some of the ideas. And now back to our own renowned physicist, Dr. Joseph Jackson. I believe Einstein would agree that when we think about moving our little finger, we send an energy signal to our finger to move. Everything is energy, and just recently, the multinational, multi-billion-dollar project to find the most basic particles may be changed to focus more on energy forms, because all the scientists finally agree with Einstein’s theory that everything is made of energy. That includes our thoughts. Questions?
Gordo asked, “So, Maria’s idea that god makes our fingers move, right? And I’ve heard that our bodies and souls are separate kinds of beings, so when we die, our souls or energy that gives us our forms leave our bodies. Josh, is that true?”
Josh told Gordo and the rest of us that it was an excellent question, that he didn’t know, and that we’d spend some time on it later in the school year. “Now I’d like to say to Maria that I don’t believe we have to invoke god to move it, we just do it ourselves. It is like our thoughts are the starter button. You know, my dear students, all these brilliant scholars at MIT are still puzzled by this question. I believe Einstein was still thinking about the kind of energy that thought, thinking, and feelings were made of up until the day he died. And the god question will have to wait, maybe for years.”
I really enjoyed this class, and I even enjoyed the homework of asking two adults what they thought about thinking as a form of energy. I would like to ask about it intelligently. I guess I’ll ask the O’Connell’s, the family I’m staying with. The last class in the morning was Spanish, and I was told I needed to join Joe Jackson with third-grade students because we were beginners. I felt like a giant with all the eight-year-olds, but they didn’t seem to care, and we felt welcome – I think Joe more than me. Maybe not. Anyway, I wanted to learn the language and I liked the woman teacher.
At lunch, I was back with the same four fifth-graders. I missed our four big brothers and sisters, but was pleasantly surprised to see Cheryl O’Connell and Debbie’s dad, as well as another mother and another dad from the other cohort’s fifth graders. Cheryl sat next to me, and I introduced her to Ella. She told us she had just received a call this morning, asking if she could join us. “I was scheduled to join you all on Friday, and I was going to tell you on Thursday.” Neither she nor I told the rest of the group that she was my foster mom. Ella knew but didn’t say anything about it. I acted like whoever she was, it was just fine with me. Cheryl was her usual gracious self. Two of the four parents were ‘old hands’ at meetings with students and parents at Two Thousand Smiles. The other two were new to the lunch meetings but had been to the ten-session parents’ orientation before school started, so they were at home with everyone – even more at home than I was, but I was getting more comfortable every hour.
I’m glad that the first class after lunch is tai chi. It gives me a chance to relax my whole body, at least the part I’m in touch with. Back in Mississippi, the only thing we were encouraged to do was to get strong and tough enough to play tackle football. We were told we didn’t need to learn to relax; we just needed to be tough enough to take and dish out a hit. Too often, I was called a sissy. I didn’t have to worry about that here, and I was glad. The second afternoon class was cosmology, which Ella informed me was the study of the cosmos, and just as the other science class was on the microcosm, today’s class is on the macrocosm. Micro and macro are new words I need to learn. A delightful young woman who was working on her Ph.D at the University of California was the teacher who showed us several short films made by the Webb Space Telescope. Wow! I’d never even heard of it. And the last class was Geography and International Relations. We hardly got out of the state of Mississippi back in Flowers, and here we were going to learn about everyone on our planet. This school year was gonna be fun.
I told Ella I would see her after classes, and I did, but I also saw Sam, our Tator. He said that he needed to talk to me right now. I told Ella that I’d catch a later tram and followed Sam back to our cohort room.
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