David Taff

David Taff
© Ken Harris 2009


Although I taught sixth and seventh grades at Sunnyview School, a first grader, David Taff, a seven-year-old with all the confidence of a winning politician, used to drop by my room in his free time to have a chat. We talked of many things and his vocabulary was so sophisticated and his observations so acute that I sometimes forgot that I was conversing with a seven-year-old boy.

David's visits dropped off a bit in the spring because a marble craze hit Sunnyview. Everyone played. Boys, and some girls, walked around with their bags of marbles dangling from their belts. At recess about half the students all you could see of them was their rear ends as they knelt in the dirt and flicked glass balls at other people's glass balls. Every now and then someone would show up with a ball bearing for a shooter, a “steelie,” and great would be the outcry of indignation.

But one lunch period David showed up at my desk without his bag of marbles. I asked him, “David, have you lost your marbles?” (Pretty clever joke, huh?)

David replied, “No, but I thought the interest in marbles would soon peak, maybe next week, so I thought I'd sell out while the market is up.”

I thought David was an American until his sister showed up for kindergarten. She didn't speak English at all. She only spoke Swedish and Spanish, the two languages in her home.

I imagine we all work for David now. We just don't know it.