I Am Isabel the Storyteller

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Tag: Clyde has trouble at school and Isabel helps him

February 6, 2021

#28. The sadness table gets set up in an unexpected place: outside Clyde’s Kindergarten room.

When Dad took me to swim lessons at the YMCA, the first week I was fine. But the next week I hold onto the parking meter and bawl my eyes out. I didn’t know that Going-For-Swim-Lessons was something that happened over and over!  Clyde is confused in the same way too.

Well, Clyde, says Pop. You see, it’s like this. You have to go to school EVERY day.

Clyde’s face falls like a popped balloon. He whimpers; but, what he says next breaks my heart. I want Mommy! I want Mommy!

I’m finding out that my family’s sadness meal is a long one. And the table gets set up in unexpected places. I’m pretty sure we kids have never actually said “I want Mommy” out loud since she was murdered.

It gets real quiet in the hallway.

Just then Sam bursts out of the other Kindergarten room with his teacher, Miss Honey.  (I’m not kidding. Her name is Miss HONEY, just like the teacher in Matilda, the teacher we all loved and wanted, the protection from Miss Trunchbull’s Chokey!) I squint my eyes as they approach. There’s something familiar about the way they look racing up to us, hand in hand. I can’t put my finger on it, though.

Sam lets go of Miss Honey and takes Clyde’s hand. They turn to face the rest of us with that we-twins-against-the-world stance. Clyde already seems braver with Sam next to him.

Good. Well, then. Pop stands up and takes charge. Here’s what we need to do. The principal looks like she’s going to say something, but Pop–this guy is so cool, he could calm a barracuda that hasn’t eaten in a week–he just keeps talking. Clyde and Sam need to be in the same room. 

When Mimi and Pop registered us, the principal said that it would be “inadvisable” to have the twins in the same classroom. “Twins need to learn to be on their own,” she lectured, like we were school kids. Well, I AM a school kid, but Pop and Mimi? I mean, really. They’re old!

Pop clears his throat. He’s got an Abraham Lincoln look about him anyway, but right now he’s awesome, more like the Lincoln Memorial. I’m sorry. I should have insisted on this earlier. Someday Sam and Clyde can be in different classrooms.  Right now, however, right now? They need each other.

And that was it.  Miss Honey takes Sam and Clyde by the hand, and they head back to her room.

And, sigh! I head back to mine.

-Isabel Scheherazade

isabelwithlegupwriting.jpg(sketches by my friend Ryan)

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February 5, 2021

#27. Wherein I begin the sad tale of little Clyde. ( He’s the twin whose cowlick swirls to the right. Sam and Clyde are mirror image twins.) Pity party hereby ends.

No! No! 

As soon as I recognize Clyde’s caterwaul coming from down the Lower Levels hall,  I’m out of my desk and through the door.  It’s my brother, I yell over my shoulder to the teacher. He needs me.

Get away! Get away! Clyde has plastered himself against the wall outside his kindergarten room.  He swings his arms at a scrum of grown-ups trying to grab him.

He’s like one of Zia’s calves surrounded by the coyotes. (I round the corner into the kindergarten area.) And I’m like Sir Isaac the guard mule. (I was enjoying this excuse to escape my class.) To the rescue!  (I  skid to a stop.)

His teacher, the principal with her big shoulder-pad suit, and the school secretary have him cornered.  I spy Pop’s head going by the outside courtyard window. The school must have called home, so I’m guessing the eruption started inside the room and then spread to the outside.

Like lava.

Pop and I reach Clyde at about the same time. When he sees us, he crumbles like a muffin.

What’s up, buddy?  I give him a hug, and he clutches me like a koala bear.

Hey, boyo, what’s cooking? Pop kneels so his face is close to Clyde’s. He’s the only one of the grown-ups that knows it’s important to be at Clyde’s eye level. Clyde tries to burrow into Pop’s quilted vest.

But wait, it gets worse.

You said I needed to go to school, Pop. Clyde gulps–he has the I’ve-been-crying-for-a-while rash and hiccups. So, I WENT. Yesterday!!

–Uh oh, I’ve got to stop writing and help Mimi. She’s just called up the stairs that she doesn’t have enough eggs for the french toast she’s making for our supper. So I need to run up the hill to Zia’s barn and rummage the nests!! (THIS is a different type of chore, don’t you think?)   I’ll get back to the story as soon as possible.)

Isabel Scheherazade

isabelwithlegupwriting.jpg(This is me sketched by my friend Ryan)

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