Klarinet Archive - Posting 000258.txt from 2005/06

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Fly Swatter on Husbands
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:42:11 -0400


I wrote,
<<I'm unwilling to hit my husband with a fly swatter, >>

Walter Grabner wrote,
>Such restraint.................
>
>Ummm...this begs the question.......what is it that you
>ARE willing to hit your husband with, Lelia?

LOL! (Good one, Walter--serves me right.) Well, when we used to play gin
rummy and Kevin said, "Hit me," I dealt him a card; but that's the only way
either of us has ever "hit" the other.

Tony Pay wrote about a student:
>>"Well,...it's easier to play it for Mr Angress," he said.
>>
>>"...you see, he hits me on the top of my head on every beat."

The perennial complaint to the substitute teacher: "The regular teacher
doesn't do it that way. The regular teacher does such-and-such." So,
what's the rest of the story? Did you oblige him by thumping his noggin in
time to the music?

I'd forgotten about something that happened years ago, until these threads
reminded me. As a teenager, in the early 1960s, I did some volunteer work
after school in what we would now call a day care center, for children who
needed structured supervision instead of a regular babysitter. Some had
Down Syndrome, others used wheelchairs or crutches because of polio, others
were mentally ill, and some were autistic. My job was mostly to clean up
messes and prevent the mentally ill kids from savaging the ones who
couldn't protect themselves. One day, a teacher tried to loosen a
physically rigid autistic boy, about seven or eight years old, who would
sit absolutely still and respond to nothing for hours if left to himself.
The teacher, who was new and who apparently hadn't been told that this boy
couldn't bear to be touched, put on a lively dance record, took hold of the
boy's hands, pulled him to his feet and tried to persuade him to dance to
the music. He jerked away, ran straight at the wall, smashed into it
face-first, then began banging his head violently against the wall, with
blood pouring from his nose. When the teacher caught up with him and
pulled him away from the wall, he fought like a trapped badger, but
throughout this frenzy, he banged his head *precisely in time to the
music,* and when he fought the teacher, he slugged her and kicked her in
time to the music, too. In his own way, that boy was dancing. Someone had
the presence of mind to yank the needle off the LP. As soon as the music
fell silent, the boy froze again. He sat down on the nearest chair with
his back stiff and straight and his face blank, and he responded not at all
as the teacher stuffed Kleenex up his bleeding nostrils and washed his face.

Lelia Loban

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