March 25, 2023: Elementary -

I volunteer on Wednesdays with two little boys who are beginning  readers. Both of them lost their two front teeth this winter, so the cuteness factor is high..  My first stint is with Tex, and my second with Romeo (not their real names, but you would approve of these as pseudonyms if you met them). 

Our assignment is just to make reading fun. The first day, I tried some of the getting-to-know-you questions with Tex, but he would have none of it.

“What’s your favorite animal?” He made no sound, but silently mouthed, “I don’t know.” 

“Okay, well, do you have any pets?”  Silently, “I don’t know.”

I said, “Come on, you know whether you have a pet or not!” He sat me out. He’d resist torture, as a POW. I went on to the traditional beginning question:

“Do you want me to read to you, or do you want to read to me?” He pointed to me.

Second week, same thing. Info on a need-to-know basis only.

But I had brought him a card, in an envelope. He couldn’t read it, but he gestured for me to open it and read it to him:  DEAR TEX, I LIKE READING WITH YOU.  He took it home..

The third week, he spoke two words aloud, just as our time ended.  He said, “No card??”

Things have gotten more lively. He will tell me what his shirt is about, using as few words as possible. “Jurrasic Park. Movie.” “The Beavers. Football.” And he has begun to read. We grin when we see each, other each week.

Romeo is happy to talk, but would prefer to run around the room. The ice needed no breaking. The first week, I heard about his sisters, his dad, and his grandmother’s tamales, which she makes for him on his birthday. They are DELICIOSO! (A person lacking front teeth can work up quite a spray on DELITHIOTHO!)

When I asked, “Do you want to read, or do you want me to?” he scoffed, “I don’t READ. I’m a numbers guy!”

So I began to read, while he went from bench to tabletop to under the table, and then off to talk to the maintenance man.  I called him back, and said Hey, Romeo, actually, for the time we’re together, we’re supposed to have fun reading.

He said, “How much are they paying you to do this??” 

I made a zero with my hands.

He said, “ZERO?!?! They should PAY you to do this!!”  I said I did it because I enjoyed it. He said, “They should PAY you!”

I asked if he paid his grandma when she made tamales, and he said, “How much would you pay for one of her tamales?” Then he talked me up to $5 .

Romeo truly doesn’t read, though he knows the letters. I read to him, while trying to keep him from shredding the pages, or running off, or poking me with a pencil. As a treat, we stop and do numbers. This week, he asked me what year I was born, and I wrote it down. He said Nine Fifty-Five.  I said, No, actually, NineTEEN Fifty- Five.

Then I wrote down another number and said, This is the year my daughter was born.

He said, “Oh, 31 years apart!” I hadn’t even stacked the years up with the big one on top! They were in different quadrants of the paper. He’s a numbers guy.

I’ve never brought Romeo a card, because I figure he’d turn it into confetti  in five minutes. But I’m wondering if I could make a numbered card he’d like. Maybe I could use the numbers for his birth date,  over a photo of a tamale. I’m thinking about it.