Sapphic Voices General Fiction

A NICE PERK

“Ms. R, you have really great handwriting,” whispers Becca as she watches her teacher write on Jordan’s assignment sheet.

“Oh, I’m rushing, it’s messy.” Leah tries to be modest.

She tries to be modest, but really she loves it.

Hearing that from the kids.

Remembering what it was like to watch people write. To watch them write and envy the ease with which they did it.

Leah volunteered in a first grade classroom when she was still in high school.

“Leah!” they would shout as she walked in the room on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

And she marveled at it then too.

Then, long before she had worked to perfect her teacher handwriting, the children would ooh and ahh and stare intently as her finger held the pencil that created the magical lines and squiggles and loops and dots that turned into something someone else could read.

Elizabeth loved it most of all.

All of the children asked Leah to write their names on sheets of paper.

“Can you write mine in curfuss, too?” asked Elizabeth. “Sure, Elizabeth. I can write yours in cursive too.”

And Leah wasn’t dumb or naïve or undriven enough to think for a moment that this was teaching – or that this was the reason to do it.

Learning and challenging and questioning and creating self worth and skills and safety and literacy and respect. Those were all there.

But it was a nice perk.

In a job with so few.

When some kids comment on how fairly run of the mill handwriting looks beautiful or how cursive looks fancy or how a formulairally drawn flower is a masterpiece.

Leah accompanied some children on a trip.

And so she brought along a bag of tricks. Clay, Madlibs, paper, markers. And pipe cleaners.

And Leah is one of the least artistically skilled people she knows but somehow children and their parents alike are amazed at how she can start with 5 disconnected fuzzy pipe cleaners and, within minutes, transform them into hummingbirds and palm trees and butterflies and anything else they saw that day on their trip.

And the kids try too and, like Leah, they are perfectionists so they go with it and make perfect striped snakes. With Leah’s help, they twist the ends shut, and they continue bending and molding.

When Leah first brought out the pipe cleaners, the kids were enthralled with Game Boy.

The owner of the hotel looked down at her. “You don’t think you’re gonna tear those kids away from Nintendo, do you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she quietly replied, smiling and she twisted and turned the green into wings and the yellow to a body and as the humming bird took shape, eyes slowly looked up from Nintendo.

“Hey how’d you do that?”

Leah smiled. And quietly offered the pipe cleaners across the table.

If you have enjoyed Lani Radack's "A NICE PERK", then please be certain to e-mail her at  radacklani[at]hotmail.com  and thank her for posting this Story.

Click here for a list of all of Lani Radack's  Stories and Poetry at  Sapphic Voices Authoresses.

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