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.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Thanos Sioris
Thanos Sioris
©Ken Harris, 2008
Sunnyview School had many creative, intelligent students. Unfortunately, they seldom displayed both qualities at the same time. Thanos Sioris was one of the most interesting boys in my sixth grade class. Of moderate height for a twelve-year-old, he was neither the tallest nor the shortest boyi n the class. His complexion was not notably pale, even though his mother was Finnish. Neither was his complexion a Mediterranean walnut though his father was Greek. He was a little on the rotund side and not at all athletically gifted. He possessed none of the attributes that would make him a middle school idol.
Normally such a child would be scorned and teased by his classmates and older students. But such was not the case with Thanos, for the other students recognized in him qualities that made him an original. For one thing, he was always in the adult ego state. You may recall Dr. Eric Bern’s book, I’m O.K., You’re O.K., in which he identified three ego states, Parent, Adult and Child. These ego states were beautifully personified in the original Star Trek. Captain Kirk was almost always the Parent, Mr. Spock was the Adult, and Dr. McCoy was the Child. My sixth grade at Sunnyview School was blessed with a short, slightly rotund Mr. Spock.
Thanos engaged life as a series of problems to be met and solved. So, when some other students asked him to make some itching powder, Thanos regarded the problem as a scientific conundrum. “All right, how do you make itching powder?” Thanos didn’t get into as much trouble as he could have because the staff knew that for him it was an intellectual problem. It probably didn’t even occur to him to ask what the others were going to do with the itching powder. That wasn’t part of the problem.
Once he came up to me with a chemistry problem. “Mr. Harris, I know that you need saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur to make gunpowder. But I can’t find out how much or what the right proportions are. Do you know?”
“No, Thanos, I don’t know,” I replied. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you because you’d blow us all up with your experiments.” He didn’t take my response personally but wandered off instead to seek an answer from another source.
Thanos also had focus. He absolutely knew he was going to be a doctor when he grew up and spent long hours preparing himself. He worked in an apothecary’s shop after school. He had a better, larger, more fully equipped first aid kit at home than we did at school.
That first winter in Spain, in cold, drizzly, wind blown Spain, I developed a head cold with all the uncomfortable symptoms possible. I didn’t miss a one. One day at the height of my misery Thanos handed me the names of two over-the-counter remedies that would address my symptoms., one for my sinuses and runny nose, and the other for my coughing.
He failed to understand the humor when anonymous students posted an ad for “Dr. Sioris” on the school bulletin board that even gave his office hours. If it came down to it, which it never did, I would rather have gone to “Dr. Sioris” than a Spanish doctor. Thanos had a good command of spoken English and a comprehensive knowledge of readily available medicines.
One day in the spring of 1975 a seventh grade boy, Steve Ogden, did something to render himself unconscious on the playground. Even the people with him were unsure of what had happened and, therefore, had no useful opinions about what he might have injured or how badly.
Joanne had him moved into a lounge, out of public view, and laid upon a cushioned surface normally used as a settee. And there he lay, inert but breathing, Joanne observing closely. Thanos entered the room and observed dispassionately, “Mrs. Harris, if his neck is injured he would be better off on a hard surface, the floor, for instance, than the soft one.”
Joanne realized that Thanos was absolutely correct, but replied with perhaps a little more vehemence than necessary, “Thanos, we’re not moving him until we know how badly he’s injured.”
Thanos then launched into an apparently inexhaustible supply of dreadful, dismal and disastrous tales about injuries to the cranium and cervical spine. Just as he was really warming to his subject, the object of concern groaned and then murmured, “Oh, my head.”
At that point the bell rang and Dr. Sioris returned to his regular duties in the sixth grade classroom. Nowadays when Dr. Sioris returns to his regular duties, they are in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland. But I knew him when he treated common colds and offered friendly advice and cautionary tales to concerned teachers.
©Ken Harris, 2008
Sunnyview School had many creative, intelligent students. Unfortunately, they seldom displayed both qualities at the same time. Thanos Sioris was one of the most interesting boys in my sixth grade class. Of moderate height for a twelve-year-old, he was neither the tallest nor the shortest boyi n the class. His complexion was not notably pale, even though his mother was Finnish. Neither was his complexion a Mediterranean walnut though his father was Greek. He was a little on the rotund side and not at all athletically gifted. He possessed none of the attributes that would make him a middle school idol.
Normally such a child would be scorned and teased by his classmates and older students. But such was not the case with Thanos, for the other students recognized in him qualities that made him an original. For one thing, he was always in the adult ego state. You may recall Dr. Eric Bern’s book, I’m O.K., You’re O.K., in which he identified three ego states, Parent, Adult and Child. These ego states were beautifully personified in the original Star Trek. Captain Kirk was almost always the Parent, Mr. Spock was the Adult, and Dr. McCoy was the Child. My sixth grade at Sunnyview School was blessed with a short, slightly rotund Mr. Spock.
Thanos engaged life as a series of problems to be met and solved. So, when some other students asked him to make some itching powder, Thanos regarded the problem as a scientific conundrum. “All right, how do you make itching powder?” Thanos didn’t get into as much trouble as he could have because the staff knew that for him it was an intellectual problem. It probably didn’t even occur to him to ask what the others were going to do with the itching powder. That wasn’t part of the problem.
Once he came up to me with a chemistry problem. “Mr. Harris, I know that you need saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur to make gunpowder. But I can’t find out how much or what the right proportions are. Do you know?”
“No, Thanos, I don’t know,” I replied. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you because you’d blow us all up with your experiments.” He didn’t take my response personally but wandered off instead to seek an answer from another source.
Thanos also had focus. He absolutely knew he was going to be a doctor when he grew up and spent long hours preparing himself. He worked in an apothecary’s shop after school. He had a better, larger, more fully equipped first aid kit at home than we did at school.
That first winter in Spain, in cold, drizzly, wind blown Spain, I developed a head cold with all the uncomfortable symptoms possible. I didn’t miss a one. One day at the height of my misery Thanos handed me the names of two over-the-counter remedies that would address my symptoms., one for my sinuses and runny nose, and the other for my coughing.
He failed to understand the humor when anonymous students posted an ad for “Dr. Sioris” on the school bulletin board that even gave his office hours. If it came down to it, which it never did, I would rather have gone to “Dr. Sioris” than a Spanish doctor. Thanos had a good command of spoken English and a comprehensive knowledge of readily available medicines.
One day in the spring of 1975 a seventh grade boy, Steve Ogden, did something to render himself unconscious on the playground. Even the people with him were unsure of what had happened and, therefore, had no useful opinions about what he might have injured or how badly.
Joanne had him moved into a lounge, out of public view, and laid upon a cushioned surface normally used as a settee. And there he lay, inert but breathing, Joanne observing closely. Thanos entered the room and observed dispassionately, “Mrs. Harris, if his neck is injured he would be better off on a hard surface, the floor, for instance, than the soft one.”
Joanne realized that Thanos was absolutely correct, but replied with perhaps a little more vehemence than necessary, “Thanos, we’re not moving him until we know how badly he’s injured.”
Thanos then launched into an apparently inexhaustible supply of dreadful, dismal and disastrous tales about injuries to the cranium and cervical spine. Just as he was really warming to his subject, the object of concern groaned and then murmured, “Oh, my head.”
At that point the bell rang and Dr. Sioris returned to his regular duties in the sixth grade classroom. Nowadays when Dr. Sioris returns to his regular duties, they are in the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland. But I knew him when he treated common colds and offered friendly advice and cautionary tales to concerned teachers.
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