Subject: swing your partner, do-se-do
Date: Mar 30, 2000

Things were strange at school today. The parking lot gate I normally enter through was padlocked, I had to go around the building a bit to find a different way in. When I got onto the grounds all the outer doors were closed, usually about half of them are open. Absolutely no kids were outside. There's usually a crowd milling around near the lunch room, but not today.

There's a podium situated in the hall, right outside the school office, that is normally manned by an older guy who is the head of school security. He's almost always there and today was no exception. I asked him: "Is something unusual going on today?" A pained expression crossed his face. He spoke quietly. "There was a shootout in the neighborhood earlier today. We had the school locked down for awhile." Well.

I went into the library to claim a table and was very happy to see that the book fair was finally over. Amanda was at the front desk and she looked really cute. Her normal style of dress involves big frumpy clothes that don't give you much of a clue what she might look like underneath, but today she was wearing a tight pair of black pants and a grey sleeveless sweater. She's as thin as a rail and her upper arms are heavily freckled. She looks like a bookish Meg Ryan.

"Wow, I am so glad the library is back to normal," I said. "Well actually it isn't," she replied, and mentioned the gang shooting that had caused the lockdown earlier in the day. She said there had been random gunfire incidents going on for about a week now.

While the book fair was going on I only saw Amanda briefly and she seemed kind of, well, distant. I was afraid that meant that she'd somehow seen the progress report I'd turned in that mentioned her and she wasn't happy about it. But today she was back to her normal ebullient self, so I guess I can chalk it up to the rigors of the fair. We had quite a conversation. She told me that they'd sold a lot of books and that she gets to keep some of the money to buy more books, videotapes, and software. I learned that she lives over on Miami Beach. Sheesh, what is it with that place? I'd think it would be awfully expensive for somebody trying to live there on a school librarian's salary. I asked her if she'd be spending another year at this school and she said "Oh, definitely." "I suppose there's a lot more work to be done here than in most schools," I said. She nodded.

Today is the last day before spring break. As might be expected, it was difficult to get Rodney to concentrate on anything. As soon as I got him from class he was already listless. When we got to the library I asked him if he'd gotten moved into his new house over the weekend. He shook his head "no." "Why not?" I asked. He scrunched up his face, trying to remember the adult words he'd heard. He came up with: "We need a meter." "You mean an electrical meter?" He thought about it and nodded. "How did that happen? Didn't the people who lived there before have an electrical meter?" He didn't know, of course.

I'd brought Rolit again and Rodney's heart wasn't really in it. The result of our first game was the rarest of all possible outcomes, a tie, 32 of the balls were his color, 32 mine. The second game I beat him 40 to 24. He read a couple of short books to me but he was missing a lot of words. He has a tendency to guess what he thinks the next word will be and say that instead of reading what's on the page. "Rodney, don't guess, read what's actually there," I said, but it didn't have much effect. He didn't feel like working today.

Jim and Antoine showed up. "Hi guys," Jim said, and we said "Hi" back. We hadn't seen them since before the book fair. I noticed Antoine was in no mood to do any work either. Rodney and I thought about asking the two of them to join us in a four-player game of Rolit, but I didn't think it was a good idea. I'd heard Jim threaten to not let Antoine play any games today if he didn't straighten up, so I didn't want to undermine his authority.

I took Rodney back to class and he disappeared behind the door as usual, only to pop right back out again. "There's nobody in there!" he said. Sure enough, his class was gone. I couldn't just leave him there by himself. "Where do you think they went?" I asked. Rodney thought about it. "Maybe they're in the lunch room for the dance." "You're having a dance today?" He nodded. "Do you dance?" I asked. "No," he said, kind of dejected. "It's probably pretty much just the older kids who dance, right?" Rodney nodded. "Fourth, fifth, and sixth graders dance," he said.

I took him to the lunch room and sure enough, there was his class. His teacher gave him a ticket and pointed him to a line. "You know where to go now?" I asked. He said "yes" so I left him there and went back to the library to fill out the evaluation form.

I got back just in time to see Jim letting Antoine play a game of Mastermind. After that he had Antoine give the game back to me (I loaned it to them about a month ago). "Don't forget to say 'thank you,'" Jim had instructed, and Antoine did as he asked. "You're welcome," I said. I mentioned that we had a four-player game we'd like them to join in on the next time we see them, and they said that sounded good. I asked Jim where they'd gone while the library was unavailable and he said he'd picked an empty room on the second floor. "We were always getting into places that somebody wanted us out of," I said. Jim: "Well, there was this janitor that kind of looked like he wanted us to leave but he didn't make us." I'm glad that's over with.

Jim and Antoine left and I finished my evaluation form. On the phone last week Rodney's mom had said that she would meet us at the library this week, but she didn't. I suppose she's got her hands full with her troublesome move.

I sat in a tiny kid chair in the library having two conflicting thoughts: one, I really need to get up the nerve to ask Amanda if I can see her outside of school, and two, I really want to see that school dance. A mom and her two boys were monopolizing Amanda at the front desk, I knew I wasn't going to ask her under those conditions.

An annoucement came over the PA system: The DJ had not showed up for some reason, the dance was canceled, it would be re-scheduled for some time after spring break. So now I'm down to just one thing left to do, but the mom and her boys wouldn't leave. Five minutes, ten, fifteen. There is a definite limit to how long I can sit there without looking stupid. The mom said "C'mon Steve, c'mon Jake, let's go," then launched into another five-minute tirade. Sheesh. Finally I just had to leave. Amanda said "Have a nice afternoon." My next chance won't be for another two weeks. Bleah.