School Daze
When the bell finally rang, Mrs. Gonzalez’s fifth grade class quickly entered the classroom and took their seats. “Quiet down,” she said as she entered behind them and closed the door. “I know you’re all excited after lunch but I need you to settle down now. You know what to do next.” Routinely, the kids took out their readers and opened to the page with the red Emerson Elementary School Library marker in it.
“Before we start on chapter nine, I want to read the announcements,” she said. “There will be a raffle in the cafeteria on Monday for the sixth grade students to raise money for their spring field trip to the redwoods. If you are interested in winning some nice things, be sure to bring money for your tickets. Billy, settle down please. Thank you. Melissa, will you take out your reader and open it, please? Thank you. Settle down class. We have a lot more to do this afternoon.”
The students were still partly numb from the cold weather outside. It had been foggy that morning and the damp air always went right through their clothing and jackets. Suzie kept her coat on and cuddled herself in her seat. Bobby, the big kid, tried to act tough, as though the cold didn’t bother him. He had bragged to the others that his skin was extra thick like an alligator. Nobody really believed him. Danny sat staring intently out the window, rocking back and forth in his chair. He was different than the others. His mind was working hard but reading wasn’t what he was thinking about. The other students listened to his heavy breathing whenever the teacher paused during the announcements.
Danny was oblivious to everything, including his own wheezing nostrils. He often drifted off into deep thought and shut himself off from the rest of the world. Bobby made a muffled snickering sound under his breath. The other students occasionally looked over at Danny as he rocked oddly in his seat. Danny came back to the earth just long enough to notice Mrs. Gonzales looking toward him and smiling.
“You want me to go first?” he asked.
“No, Danny. We’re still reading the announcements. Please try to pay attention,” she replied.
Some of the girls giggled and Bobby gave his usual stare of disgust as he mouthed the word, Dummy. Danny lowered his head and continued his rhythmic rocking. He was now thinking about Mrs. Gonzales’ smiling face. She was very beautiful, he thought, and he especially liked her tanned, brown skin. When she smiled, the golden brown color of her face made her teeth seem perfectly white. She made him feel warm inside.
Announcements
“Okay, class, the other important thing is today’s soccer game between ourselves and Mr. Olsen’s sixth grade class.” She looked up with a grin as the class gave a unanimous silent cheer for their team. “I think we have a very good chance of winning that game this afternoon,” she said with reassuring confidence. “Just remember good sportsmanship. Now turn to page one fifty one and Jenny, will you begin, please?”
Jennifer Koons started to read while the rest of the students settled in for fifteen minutes of boredom. They hated reading but Mrs. Gonzales had told them that reading was the most important thing they would ever learn in school. “If you can read,” she had explained, “you can continue to learn even if you are unable to go to school.” This was good motivation for most of them. They liked the idea of not going to school.
During the reading time the kids had different ways of entertaining themselves as they awaited their turn. Some of the boys played war games with their fingers under the desk. Others put their heads down and secretly drew figures on their desktops with pencils and then erased them with their fingers and spit. The girls were more attentive than the boys. Each girl waited patiently for her turn to read. Danny, however, was different from the others. He had other things on his mind.
Danny is Different
He sat rocking and musing and looking out the window. He allowed strange and wonderful thoughts to entertain him as he waited. And because he was usually day dreaming, his grades suffered. Mrs. Gonzales did all she could to keep him on task. She made sure he did not drift too far from earth. “Danny,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “Will you read now, please?”
“Uh, where are we?” he asked sheepishly. The class mumbled and scoffed quietly.
“All right, class, settle down.” Mrs. Gonzales disliked the jeers but allowed the students to have their opinions. She tried to keep them from being insulting. But she welcomed constructive comments. As long as they weren’t hurtful.
“We’re down to the fourth paragraph on page one fifty two” she said. “Try to follow along, please, and you can read later. Okay, Suzie. Will you read, please?”
Danny glanced up at Bobby again and saw the words Big Dummy come silently from his lips. He turned back to his book and twisted his face. He decided that the next time the teacher called his name he would be ready. “How can I be ready next time?” he asked himself. He looked ahead in the reader to see if he could figure out where Mrs. Gonzales might call upon him next time. But then he realized there was no way to know when that might happen. He thought of underlining a paragraph so he could just start reading there and hope that it was the correct paragraph. But Mrs. Gonzales didn’t allow writing in the readers.
“What if the words were written in different colors,” he thought. “If my words were red, I would know when it was my turn.” He thought of the bible his mother had shown him with some of the words written in red. Then he thought of the old typewriter in the closet. He had seen his father use it and he knew that the color of the ink could be changed to red by holding a certain key while typing. “They should have used that typewriter to write this book and made my words red,” he thought.
“Thank you, Suzie.” Mrs. Gonzales had interrupted his thoughts again. “Bobby, will you continue reading where Suzie left off, please?”
Musings
Bobby read more slowly than the others, sounding out each word as he went along. He looked up to see Danny watching him. He flashed a mean look and then returned to his slow reading. Danny started to think that each student would have his or her own color in the books. “His words should be yucky colors like green and purple mixed together,” Danny thought. He then turned his attention to Melissa. He thought she was a really nice person. She was trying to follow along. “Pink,” he thought. “Her words should be a pretty color like pink or light blue or something.”
He looked around the classroom at the kids and thought of the colors that might fit each of them. He imagined colors painted onto their faces and how funny it would look. He imagined Bobby with red paint over his whole body and Indian war paint on his face. Philip, who wore glasses and didn’t speak much, was pale yellow. And Jessica had flowers of all different colors painted on her face. She smiled a lot.
It was then that he noticed Mrs. Gonzales looking at him with her beautiful tanned face. She was smiling. He put his head back down on his desk. He was embarrassed that she had seen him looking at her. He tried to find the place where Bobby was reading but he couldn’t focus. He was thinking about Mrs. Gonzales’ smiling face and her perfect white teeth. “That’s the perfect color,” he thought. “That’s the best color of all; brown. Everyone should be brown, like Mrs. Gonzales.”
“Danny, do you know where we are now?” Mrs. Gonzales asked. The question startled Danny out of his daze. He blurted out, “What color am I?”
The classroom erupted into laughter. Mrs. Gonzales tried to calm them down. She was holding back her own urge to giggle. Danny flushed as Bobby yelled to him, “From the looks of your face, I’d say you were rosy red!”
People Change
Danny felt empty inside. He had experienced this feeling before. It was when he had accidentally fallen over backwards in his chair while watching a fly on the ceiling. He was beginning to feel like a freak and he didn’t like it one bit. Mrs. Gonzales noticed his expression and called the class to order. “Stop it,” she said sternly. “That’s enough, class. Danny, if you aren’t ready to read I’ll just call on someone else. Billy?’
Billy took up reading the next paragraph with a chuckle in his voice.
“Those guys are just mean,” Danny thought.
The reading finally ended and it was now math time. Danny was thinking of ways to get even with some of the mean kids, like Bobby. Soon he gave up and went back to thinking of colors and attitudes. He liked those thoughts best.
Soon math came to an end. Science was the last subject of the day, and Danny was glad; school would soon be over. He continued thinking about colors and people. It seemed that all the colors he had put onto the others had now become a little darker. The girls didn’t seem as soft anymore. And the guys were all starting to look a lot more yucky. He decided he would just think about Mrs. Gonzales and her brown-faced smile. After a while he started feeling a little more normal again. He sat up and waited for the bell to ring. It had been a long and exhausting day for him.
Rain
When the bell finally rang, all the kids rushed to put away their papers and books so they could line up first at the door. “Don’t forget about the soccer game,” Mrs. Gonzales said enthusiastically.
Danny had forgotten about the game but the others were excited and ready to play. “Dang it,” he said under his breath. “I forgot about that dumb old game. I just want to go home.”
“Line up please,” said Mrs. Gonzales, who was watching Danny out the corner of her eye. Danny waited and got in line last. He felt small and his color had become blue. He knew the others would make fun of him during the game because he couldn’t play well. He wasn’t able to pay attention. He looked over at Mrs. Gonzales. She gave him a sad-looking smile. He sort of half-smiled back at her and then lowered his head. Billy cracked open the door to see if the sixth graders were out on the field yet.
“Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “It’s been raining.”
Mrs. Gonzales went to the door and looked out. “Sure enough,” she said. “The ground will be wet so be careful out there.”
“Shouldn’t we cancel the game?” asked one of the girls with a hopeful tone in her voice. Danny saw her color change a little.
“Of course not,” said the teacher. “We have played in wet weather before.”
The boys all let out a big hoot, but the girls sighed and dropped their arms to their sides.
“Your parents were aware that there was a chance of rain today,” said Mrs. Gonzales. “You are all dressed in pants and tennis shoes, so it’s okay to wear what you’ve got on. Now, let’s get out there and show them what we’ve got!”
Sizing up the Teams
The class ran out to the upper field where the grass was wet and soggy. Without hesitation, the boys ran onto the slick grass and started sliding around on invisible surfboards. Since their parents had allowed them to get wet and dirty, they decided to get as muddy as possible. Danny went over and sat on the bench near the sideline. He knew he probably wouldn’t be in the game anyway. They only put him in the game when someone got hurt and couldn’t play or when there weren’t enough players and he was their only choice.
The sixth graders ran onto the field and made their usual comments about how they were going to pound the fifth graders into the ground. Danny paid no attention. He was too busy looking for different colors in the sixth graders’ cloths and attitudes.
One kid looked very excited to play but he was rather short. His shorter legs would cause him to run more slowly. It would be difficult to keep up with the other players. Danny decided his color should be a gloomy yellow.
Most of the girls just stood around each other on the field and talked. They didn’t appear to be interested in the game. Danny saw soft colors on them like light blue, orange, and pink. The boys occasionally looked over at the girls. But they mostly just slid around on the wet grass, acting goofy. The girls sat close together and pretended not to be interested. But every now and then one would point to one of the boys and whisper in another girl’s ear. Danny watched them for a moment. Their colors changed and mixed and became sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, but they always remained soft.
Near the fence at the back of the field a dog walked back and forth. Danny imagined that it was trying to find a lost bone. Then he noticed a strange little bird perched on a wire above a giant maple tree. It was cackling and watching the dog anxiously. Soon, it left its perch and swooped down right over the dog’s head. It was trying to frighten the dog away. Ordinarily, Danny would have been fascinated by this silliness, but not today. He had only colors on his mind.
“Play Ball”
Soon the game started. The sixth graders kicked to the fifth graders who immediately kicked it back into sixth grade territory. All the boys raced to the ball, kicking and yelling and doing everything they could think of to get their clothes as muddy as possible. Mr. Olsen, the referee and sixth grade teacher, had trouble finding the ball in the blur of mud and flying dirt. All the boys seemed to be having the time of their lives… all except Danny.
As he watched the action, he picked out bits of color in the kids’ clothing that was still visible through the mud. Nearly all the boys had lost their colors. But the girls were still soft and pretty. Bobby played harder than the others. He played like winning was all that mattered. The others just wanted to have fun. Danny noticed that Bobby’s colors were mostly purple and black. “Those are the Devil’s colors,” he thought. Then he looked down at his own clothing and saw how bright and clean they were compared to Bobby. He had worn blue jeans and a blue shirt. “It figures,” he said with a downcast expression. “My color is Blue.”
Suddenly there was a shout in his direction. He looked up just as the ball rolled toward the bench on which he was sitting. Bobby dove for it, but he slipped and fell on his back as he tried to kick it back into play. Muddy water splashed up into Danny, covering his pants and shirt. The ball went under the bench where he sat and rolled across the lower field.
“Why didn’t you stop it, Dummy?” Bobby yelled.
He fetched the ball and then returned it to the playing field. He turned back to Danny as he walked away. An angry look showed how he felt as he huffed and ran back to his team mates. Danny turned around with his back to the game. He started to wipe the mud from his shirt. “Evil colors,” he said. “Bobby is evil.”
Danny’s Chance
As the game progressed, it became increasingly difficult to recognize the players because of the mud. One team blended in with the other. The teachers even looked confused at times. The game had gone for nearly an hour and, with time running out, the score was two to two. The sixth graders had the advantage because of their height and weight. But the muddy condition of the field evened the odds a little for the fifth graders. It looked like the game might end in a tie. But both teams were determined that there must be a winner. And that’s when something wonderful happened.
Bobby slipped and fell hard, landing on his right arm and bending it under his weight. He twisted his face and looked toward Mrs. Gonzales. She was shaking her head. Bobby walked toward her and sat down holding his shoulder. She decided she had to take him out of the game. She looked up at the players and shook her head. They all knew what she meant.
The fifth graders were now sure they would lose the game; Bobby was their best player. Mrs. Gonzales looked over at Danny, knowing he was the only other player who could fill in for Bobby. But Danny didn’t want to play for a team that thought he was a dummy. He looked up at Mrs. Gonzales. She smiled at him.
Lowering his head, he stood up and walked out onto the field. The others sighed and moaned. From the sidelines Bobby yelled, “Don’t blow it, Dummy!” Mrs. Gonzales turned and scolded him privately.
Danny went to the middle of the field, ignoring Bobby and trying to keep his shoes as white as possible. The others stood watching him. They were all soaked and looked like zombies. Danny was now the only clean person. That made him feel better. He smiled.
He stood about forty feet in front of the goal net.
“I’ll just stand here,” he thought, “and mind my own business until the sixth graders score. Then I can go home.”
Most Beautiful Color
One of the girls threw the ball in from the corner and two boys kicked it at the same time. It flew straight up in the air and, without bouncing, landed directly in front of Danny with a splat. It just stuck fast in the mud… right in front of him.
“Kick it, Danny!” the students shouted. “Kick it!”
Everybody knew that the game depended on him. He had his chance to show them all he was not a dummy. Everyone stood motionless as Danny looked around. He looked at the other team. He looked at Bobby sitting in the stands next to Mrs. Gonzales. “What should I do?” He thought. “If I kick it in, we’ll win. But I’m not sure I want our team to win.” He considered missing on purpose to get back at his classmates. But that didn’t seem right. He scratched his head and turned back to Mrs. Gonzales. She was standing with her arms crossed and smiling at him. He felt her warmth and saw that she was clean and beautiful.
“I’ll do it for her,” he thought. “I’ll do it for Mrs. Gonzales.”
He turned to the ball and lined up on the goal as the others gasped and held their breaths. He had made his decision and now he was ready. He aimed straight and kicked the ball as hard as he could. He could sense that it was going to be a good kick.
The goalie was caught off guard when he looked toward Mr. Olsen with his arms held out to the sides as if to ask “What’s going on?” And right at that moment, the ball sailed past the goalie and right into the back of the net. Danny had scored the winning point just as time ran out!
His classmates rushed toward him, shouting and laughing and clapping. He looked at Mrs. Gonzales just before they lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him around the field like a trophy. She was clapping and hopping around and smiling from ear to ear. The kids were shouting, “Danny, Danny, Danny!” Danny was being treated like a hero, something he had never experienced before.
The kids put him down again in the field and gathered around him. They patted him on the back and told him how great he was. He looked in their faces and at their clothes. Each of them was covered with beautiful brown mud.
Then he looked over at Bobby. Bobby, too, was muddy and smiling. And he was cheering for Danny.
Suddenly, things looked very different to Danny. He wasn’t the strange one anymore. He was normal, like the others. They had all changed colors. The sixth graders, the fifth graders, the teachers, even Bobby was now a nice, beautiful brown color. Everybody was the same color as Mrs. Gonzales. It was brown, a mixture of all the colors put together. It was wonderful and cheerful. And it was the most beautiful color in the world.
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