Surviving 4th Grade

My mother's been cleaning her desk, and when I stopped over there today to feed the donkeys, she handed me my fourth grade "progress report." My most impressive attribute was my perfect attendance. The areas in which I was evaluated included "work habits" "social development" "health and safety." Apparently I listened attentively, followed directions and worked without disturbing others, but my social development was lacking. Especially low were my "self confidence" and "takes care of personal belongings." The academic areas were also evaluated. My strongest area was mathematics, and my weakest was handwriting. Also I was weak in music and physical education. My language skills were adequate, but I had low marks in "writes creatively" and "exhibits interest in creative writing." My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. G, had also been my second grade teacher. The greatest burden in being in Mrs. G's class was that she picked her nose and then ate it. This habit of hers saddened me so profoundly I could not look her in the eye. Some of her written comments on this report seem cryptic. For example, she wrote, "Bonnie does seem to be trying to be more original in her writing. Bonnie has made many adjustments this year and I feel has come to appreciate them. She is accepting new situations with more enthusiasm." I can't help but feel touched, however, that she finished with, "I'll certainly miss having her around."

Big Boy

Christopher and I were out exercising the big Ford truck, testing the brakes, and we noticed that the neighborhood ostrich was running around in its pen, so we figured now was a good time to get some photos of the big fellow. The weather was warm today, giving the illusion that winter was over, and seeing the ostrich made us glad that one of the original six birds had lasted its fourteenth winter in Michigan. Ostriches are native to South Africa. We knocked on the door of the house at the corner of Market and Sprinkle, and Hannah, who is about eighty years old shushed her two dogs (mixed breed cocker spaniel and mini daschunds)and invited us to walk through her house and into the back yard to get up close and personal to Big Boy. He's seven feet tall, eight when he stretches up, and very ostrichy. Last time I'd stopped and visited the ostriches a few years ago, she'd seemed fed up with them, was complaining that her son hadn't taken them to his place as he had promised to do. She'd still had a couple females then, and she used to sell the eggs for ten dollars a piece if she could get them out of the pen without being attacked. Each of the eggs contained as much as twenty four chicken eggs, she said. When I ask her about the progress of her injury, she pulls up her pant leg and shows me the big gash of a scar. She'd been trying to administer worm medicine to the ostrich Renegade (R.I.P.) and he'd kicked her with his big front claw, and the tear went to the shin bone. Hannah's husband died last year, and when I expressed my sympathies, she reached through the chain link and scratched Big Boy's neck. She can't let him bite her any more, because her skin has grown too delicate that his beak tears her. It costs her about a hundred dollars a month to feed Big Boy. But that's okay, she says. She seems to appreciate the bird's companionship. Her dogs have soft teeth, she explains, she has to brush them weekly. She's wearing a sweater the color of a purple crocus, and after we leave, she lounges in a lawn chair near the Ostrich pen, with her two dogs at her side. The sun shines on her.