I never read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and never watched the movie/s, but I have been thinking about the Grinch in the run-up to Christmas, and now in the runoff, as it were, as the curbs here are flowing with bundles of holiday trash. There are a number of inflatable nylon Grinch figures in our neighborhood and while I find them aggressively ugly, I can relate to the Grinch’s inclination to remove things at Christmas … or nearly any other time. A parent battling entrenched toy-clutter, or stuff-clutter, more generally, can surely appreciate the beauty of a holiday in which selected things disappear. One neighborhood Grinch, displayed eight feet above the sidewalk on a angle bracketed plywood platform, actually looks like he’s leaving a loaded trash bag (full of crappy toys!) curbside as he sinks into the stub of swollen chimney.
We have had an 11 day break from school during which time I spent part of two days in the classroom hanging up loops of paper that represent the exact size (but not shape) of my student’s waistlines. I made a welcome back sign from a very large cooperative painting children worked on before the break. Because we have a new student I made a new How Many Boys, How Many Girls chart (with no ‘how many’ indicated…we’ll do that together later this week.) I washed the rest time bedding, dried and folded the sheets and blankets, replaced them in cubbies. I sorted piles of drawings (attributed, unattributed, worth keeping for end of year portfolios, things I just want to look at some more.) I made a foray into sorting through our treacherous and crowded supply closet, cursing inwardly. “F-ing marionettes, why the F did I let [my assistant teacher] keep these. I F-ing hate marionettes. What the F happened to the small rubber stamps? There’s so much F-ing crap in here! Look! These are brand new and falling apart already! F!” Ironically, I also spent several hours compiling and fretting over a very large classroom materials shopping list. And like the Grinch I entertained a keenly felt desire to remove a variety of items from the classroom. If I could, if I would…why don’t I just go ahead? Rather than grapple with that tough question I reviewed all the materials I’m disappointed with…that I’m storing and not using because they are frustrating and unproductive for children. We are somewhat restricted as to vendors we may order from and the limitations can really nettle…and result in closets partly filled with crappy materials.
Topping the list of crap I store are the terrible chalk boards (lap boards…about the size of a standard sheet of paper) we ordered from Discount School Supply. They are slick and do a fine job of resisting chalk which barely stutters along leaving only faint traces of our efforts to make a mark. I have permanently marred several slippery pale boards, working VERY aggressively to make a substantial, saturated line. Maybe we’ll use them for roofs in the block area, otherwise they are a waste of city and federal money!
More money was wasted on: six bubble tongs which pop apart when used energetically, foam paint rollers which pop apart when used energetically, Discount School Supply washable tempera. The consistency is consistently sloppy thin or cloggy thick…depending on the color and the batch. Low pigment saturation makes it washable. All the colors are somehow untrue and shifty. The blue is lugubrious, indelible, and ferocious: Implacable King Indigo staining counters, paint pots, clothes, and skin. Good luck mixing green, it’s always nearly black because of the blue (and because of the yellow, see below.) The red is anemic, is actually pink. The red’s astounding weakness is revealed by the fact that the white paint winds up blue at the end of free play, instead of pink, which it would be, if the red had any guts. The yellow cowers, semi-translucent; it is more easily tainted, even, than the white paint.
All this vitriol! I am profoundly particular. But I like some of the things I don’t like. The dolls, the small plastic people that are stored in a red bin alongside a variety of small blocks and simple construction toys are NOT a waste of money. The figures represent a narrowly defined range of family ethnicities (African American, Latino, Asian, White), and configurations (we don’t have any very small children in our current family sets…which is problematic both for our classroom and for the future of the doll community.) Some years everyone wants the blonde mom. The Latino girl with pigtails usually goes home in a pocket sooner or later never to be seen again. There are community workers (career choice figures) who enjoy varying degrees of popularity. Some years everyone wants the white firefighter lady (whom they call the fireman.) This year the Black cop is the popular guy. There are differently abled people whom the children don’t really recognize as such, partly because their assistive devices are problematic. The wheel chair breaks and the figure seated in it can no longer play basketball. He sits on the shelf above the cubbies. The blind man’s cane breaks and the children fight viciously, teeth bared, for possession of his seeing eye dog. The doll’s faces lack affect by design, but with use they are ground down, gouged, disfigured, and thus rendered evocative. We have twin Latino grannies - they share one abuelo between them and time has treated one more kindly than the other. They spend a lot of their time in the red bin, these days, but they’re still in the game, potentially. They’re not in the trash bag, yet.
Perhaps this year I will have the courage, in the classroom and at home, to take more things away (like the Grinch) and to throw more things away. I will join with my neighbors in decking the curbs with sacks of bundled loss and gain.
