THE BOLAN CHRONICLES: Reading # 39

39. Approximate Minutes Reading (AMR): 6

Introduction to Characters
Miss Wilder: Deans Kindergarten Teacher
Miss Beth: School Secretary

THE BOLAN CHRONICLES

Chapter 3
A Real Live Policeman

**Kindergarten**

Donna had been no different than the rest of the moms on the first day. She struggled to leave. The classroom was filled with more adults than five-year-old’s, and when Miss Wilder asked the adults to say their goodbyes, you’d have thought that four years were to pass rather than four hours before the adults would return to pick up their offspring. The little five-year-olds had their arms outstretched, and the parents and grandparents hardly made it out the door without running into someone or something as they couldn’t take their gaze off of the little ones. 

Miss Wilder fell in love with Dean the moment she laid eyes on him. Now at 26, she had been teaching for only two years, and the new teacher spark still fired strongly in her. And Dean very quickly fell in love back. While he wasn’t the doting five-year-old, he rarely took his eyes off of the teacher. Dean watched her every move as she pointed to the letters on the blackboard. He would watch her at her desk when the aid, Miss Beach, an older woman with out of control gray hair and a very loud voice, would attempt to herd the children to each of their tables to begin a fingerprinting project. 

But it was nap time that Dean enjoyed the most. It was the only time when there was some sense of quiet. Dean was a shy boy, and he liked quiet. It’s one of the reasons Miss Wilder admired him so much. “He’s such a breath of fresh air!” She’d said to Donna when the long first day had finally ended. And Donna smiled and thanked her and she reached down and grabbed Dean’s little hand and smiled at him. The first day was a grand success.

While Dean’s first year of school was going rather splendidly, life at home was taking a gradual turn for the worse. Jake and Donna spent less time together than they had prior to his job at the department. Their personal time in the bedroom seemed to Donna to have taken a turn for the worse as well. While Jake was still attracted to her sexually, she noticed that he had become more dominating and demanding and less concerned with the romantic side of lovemaking. 

One night, after Jake had loudly shouted demands of Donna in the bedroom, they heard a knock at their bedroom door. Donna turned back to Jake and said, “We have to be quieter, Jake. Please.” She had opened the door and walked Dean back to bed and had ensured him that everything was alright; that Mom and Father had just gotten into a little argument. 

After the third “little argument,” Dean had chosen to stay in bed. And while all of this bothered Donna, she had also found herself less motivated to opine. An almost new level of fear had set in. Jake was becoming more impatient and more often inclined to semi-violent outbursts. She attributed it to the stress of the new job, and she kept quiet about it.

Jake had also become impatient with his five-year-old Dean. They couldn’t get in and out of the car without a demeaning comment. 

“Why the hell does he take his sweet time?” 

“Jake, he’s five!”

  “Dean! Let’s move, boy! Life is short!” Was the common command.

But this didn’t seem to bother Dean. He didn’t speed up, and he didn’t as much as glance at his father. The demands were usually followed by no response at all, and this irritated Jake even more. He’d grab Dean by his arm and pull him out of the car. Then he’d lean over and lecture him on the importance of time-efficiency. Dean would look at his mom then back at his dad, then seemingly at nothing at all. 

“There it is, Donna! It’s like he’s somewhere else…like he just zones out or something.” 

So Dean, when it came time to jump out of the car and head to the classroom in the mornings, would generally beat his mother to the front office door. And over time, he got over a bit of his natural shyness. “Hi Miss Beth!” He’d call out to the office secretary, and she would make her way to Dean to give him his hug. Donna fell in love with the morning ritual and found herself prepping little Dean for the happy start to the day before they reached the school.

“I wonder if Miss Beth is sitting at her desk right now, looking out the window, just waiting for you to come through the door.” Dean would smile and shrug his shoulders as if to say, ‘I don’t know, Mom. What do you think?’

Miss Wilder, over the course of the year, found herself appreciating the likes of little Dean Bolan more and more. While she did her best to treat every student respectfully, some were considerably difficult. 

One in particular, a short, chubby little blonde-haired boy named Bobby, seemed to have as much energy as three boys his age. One of his favorite activities was throwing things. One morning, he and Dean were sitting together at an activity table piled high with Legos. Dean had built a car and was rolling it from one hand to the other. Bobby grabbed the car and held it high in the air. “Watch! It can fly!” And he tossed the car. It hit a wall and fell to the ground in pieces. Bobby looked at Dean and laughed. Dean replied calmly, “Why? Why did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Bobby laughed, “I just wanted!”

Miss Wilder picked up the disassembled little car and set it on the table in front of Dean. “It’s okay, Dean. We can put it back together.” Then she looked at Bobby and said, “Bobby, that was not nice at all. Dean worked hard on that little car, and you were not being nice by throwing it like that. Besides, it could have hit someone and hurt them.” Then she guided Bobby to a table where no students were seated. “I’m going to have you sit here alone for a while, Bobby. I want you to think about what you did and why it was not very nice. I hope that you will never do that again.”

While she was helping Dean reassemble the car, Miss Wilder said, “I’m sure that Bobby will not ever do that again, Dean. I hope that the two of you can still be friends.”

“He’s not my friend,” Dean replied. “He isn’t nice.”

“Do you think that you could ever be his friend?” She continued.

Dean continued worked at reassembling his car and said nothing at first. 

“Dean?”

“Maybe,” Dean replied. “Maybe if he’s nice.”

Miss Wilder smiled, “Well, he would be very lucky to have you as a friend, Dean.”

“Thank you.”

And while Dean liked going to school, he enjoyed spending time alone, fiddling with crafts or paging through a picture book, and story-time took a close second to nap time. Every morning she gathered the small children on the “Story Rug” at the foot of her “Story Chair” precisely at 9:30. Miss Wilder was an expert story-teller. And though a few students seemed to find pleasure in interruption, Dean was patient. On most occasions, she would simply read a story to the children, but on special occasion, she would teach them a song. Dean’s favorite was “Apples and Banana’s,” a children’s song that emphasized the vowels of words. “I like to eat, eat, eat, apples and bananas,” was followed by “I like to ate, ate, ate, ayples and baynaynays.” And it included all of the vowels, which produced some funny sounding words, which in turn produced giggles from the little kindergarteners.  

One Friday morning the call was given, and like scurrying little chicks, the kindergarteners made their way to their places, most with their hands cupped under their chins, eagerly awaiting the next wonderful tale. 

“Okay, kids,” Miss Wilder said, “Today’s book has almost no words in it!”

They ooh’d and awed, and Bobby called out, “It has all pictures?” 

“Well, almost all pictures, Bobby, but it starts out with just a few words to get our imaginations rolling.” She held up the book.

“What’s it say?” Bobby asked.

“It’s called, Good Dog, Carl.”

Immediately, Bobby looked over the mass of peers behind him and announced, “I have a dog! His name is Ivan!”

Other students joined in, though not as emphatically.

Then Bobby added, “Dad says he’s terrible! He likes to poop in the kitchen!” And the students giggled, some of the little girls covering their mouths.

Miss Wilder said, “Okay, Bobby. That’s enough. We can talk about your dogs after the story. Let’s just find out what this book is about.” 

Dean watched and listened intently as the teacher turned each page, briefly describing the scenes and asking the students questions. Bobby always seemed to have something to say, so Dean was pleased, when after one too many interruptions, Miss Wilder asked Mrs. Beach to escort Bobby to the back of the room and sit at a table next to him. He frowned when Dean turned and offered a blank stare. 

After the story, Miss Wilder asked the children about their own pets at home; was any of them anything like Carl and would any of them like to have a dog like Carl. She was surprised when Dean raised his hand.

“Yes, Dean.”

“I want a dog like that because he likes music.”

Confused, Miss Wilder replied, “He likes music? How do you know that, Dean?”

Dean looked around at his peers, then back at his teacher, “They danced.”

Miss Wilder turned a few pages back in the book and found a picture of Carl and his dog dancing in the middle of the living room. “You’re right, Dean!”

At the end of the school day, when Miss Wilder told Donna about Dean’s contribution to the conversation, Donna laughed and said, “He does love music. He started showing signs of that almost from the very beginning.”