Shane is a Very Attentive Student.
I met Shane halfway between home and the bus stop, because I couldn’t wait to hear about his first day of school.
“How was it?” I asked excitedly.
“It was good,” he said – his standard answer.
“How were your classes?”
“Good. Except for Health. We basically just sat there and did nothing for the whole seventh period.”
“You did? Why?”
“Because there was nothing for us to do. We were just sitting there with all the kids from P.E. in the gym and they were talking to us about P.E. but I have Health so I didn’t have to do anything.”
“So what did you learn about P.E.?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I have Health. And the teachers just stopped talking after a few minutes, so we all just sat there and looked at each other.”
The more I listened to this line of conversation, the more I believed that Shane was supposed to listen to the teacher. But if the teacher wasn’t talking, perhaps there was something else Shane was supposed to do.
Shane is a very attentive student. Even if he’s not looking at the teacher, he soaks in every word. He hears everything. I think it’s from years of vision processing disorder, when he over-developed his audial sense. So if he said he was supposed to just sit there, he was probably supposed to just sit there.
Or maybe he actually missed some vital instruction. We may never know.
The next morning, Shane announced that he was only late to one class because he couldn’t find it.
“That’s great!” I said.
“And I wasn’t late to Health, except there was a note on the door that we were supposed to meet in the gym.”
“Are you going to the Health room today, or the gym?”
“I think we have to go back to the gym.”
“So you can sit there and look at each other again?”
“I guess so,” Shane said.
And sure enough, that’s what they did the next day, too. I’m not sure Shane is ready for plain, boring middle school. But he seems content – and that is such a relief, and such a wonderful thing, that I’m not going to worry for a second.