Foil Boy

One of my favorite parts of teaching first grade is the fact that it is never ever boring. Each new year as I embark on a new educational journey I learn to embrace another set of children and undertake all the peculiar and humorous character traits of each of them. This year I have come across a curiously amusing child named Malachi. Malachi is a relatively tall, lanky African American boy whose big brown eyes seem to glimmer with mischief. In the classroom he is a well-behaved, rather quiet child. When I first met Malachi I considered him to be a typical six year old child, until I sat next to him at lunch.

On the first day of school teachers have to sit in the lunch room and eat with their students. This of course, is torture for the teachers, but it has to be done. Once I settled all my squirmy, restless pupils at the table with their square, classic yellow lunch trays I myself sat down to eat. I took my seat at the end, across from two boys and next to Malachi. What possessed me to eat so close to little boys is beyond me. Little boys are not the most well mannered eaters. It’s not their parents fault, they are just boys. As they wiggled, jiggled and convulsed with excitement of the over stimulating cafeteria, their lunches trickled on to the table, floor and their clothes. After reminding the boys to quiet their sharp, penetrating voices and to close their sandwich packed mouths, I settled in to work on my own lunch. But just as I would take a minuscule bite, an eager hand would fly into the air to tell me they needed a fork, or napkin or something painstakingly important that they had to have at that exact, precise moment. As grape jelly was oozing on to the table, and chocolate milk dribbled down shirts, Malachi sat poised on the bench alongside me. As I was choking down my last bite of sandwich, I felt a slight, subtle tug on my shirt. Malachi asked me if I would help him with his yogurt lid. As I carefully tore the foil off, he informed me that he could make anything out of foil. “Really? You can?” I questioned. “Oh yes!” he replied, beaming with pride. Within minutes Malachi had transformed his yogurt lid into a turtle. Each day since, Malachi finds some sort of foil from the lunch table and makes it into an animal. I now have a rather extensive collection of dinosaurs, snakes, elephants, giraffes, alligators and turtles all made of foil that I will, of course, treasure always.