For an audio recording of this piece through Allears click here

On the last day we got to hang out, the kindergartner I work with came in from recess bouncing. I watch out for him on the playground, making sure he has lots of time to be goofy but that he doesn’t start a revolution of five-year-olds refusing to come in when the whistle blows. On Fridays my job is (was? I don’t want to think about this in the past tense) easier because it’s hot lunch day, but then he books it inside while I struggle to keep my speed-walking from becoming a full-on sprint, quietly calling after him “No parkour-walking feet, walking feet!” By the time I catch up with him and have folded myself into the tiny chair next to his desk, he’s bopping his head chomping on his first bite, declaring through a mouthful of chicken fingers, “I did good today!”

“Oh absolutely, dude. That’s going in the report.” I’ll circle a big smiley face on the daily form.

“It’s supposed to be filled in, not circled.”

“You’re right, my man, I forgot.”

On Mondays, without the lure of once-a-week fast food, the way I got him to cheerfully come inside from the playground was by switching up the enamel pin I would put on the lanyard for my employee ID, covering it up with my hand and asking if he had noticed which one I was wearing. He would giggle and shake his head “no”. The rules of our game meant I wouldn’t reveal which pin I was wearing until we got all the way to the classroom. On Mondays, and Mondays only, we would walk in together at a leisurely pace, his eyes squinting in a smile locked onto me until I removed my hand for the big reveal right inside the classroom doorway.

The last Monday I worked he was absent, home sick with super-ordinary-for-small-kids-in-the-spring croup. I was home with the same ordinary virus the next few days and then? Then school was over for the year.

I miss the routine of changing my pin once a week. I miss taking thirty seconds each Monday morning to let him know that we are a team bound together by games and silliness and affection. I miss picking out which one would seem like a good-enough surprise, a good-enough reward for coming in from outside. That last Monday the pin I had put on was Dory, the blue tang, swimming in her coffee pot. It’s my favorite, and his favorite, too, and the first pin he noticed that set off our game.

I’m not changing it until I see him again.

This was a piece I wrote this week as an assignment from the Steppenwolf Education Department-for Maker May they had a two part webinar with essayist Samantha Irby and Ian Belknap of Write Club discussing and developing Live Lit-pieces that are meant to be performed. Maybe I’ll eventually figure out how to post a video here as well, to adhere better to the spirit of the assignment! These were written and revised with a two minute limit in mind, about something from before lockdown that you miss terribly. I want to thank them so much for everything. It was a welcome change of pace, and some of the only new writing I’ve been able to get myself to do. Incidentally, my eleven-year-old had an almost identical writing assignment for his online classes this week. Although his video conference was, like, his twentieth, and mine was my first.