Boys

I just finished reading "Boys" by David Lloyd, a book that I picked up on the throwaway shelf at University of Hawaii. The short stories contained in this volume are set in 1966, a time when I was already aware that both boys and girls could be awfully mean to each other. Terry Hald and Tracy Scanell probably don't remember the day they found the pancaked & dried frog on Liberty Street, picked it up, and threw it at me. Prissy doctor's daughters, both of them. Why have I never forgotten? David Sammon's father was also a physician of some kind. In second grade David terrorized me with threats that he was going to bring his pocket knife to school and cut me with it. I was afraid to go to school and no one would DO anything about him.
Boys...
Anyhoo, this book by David Lloyd was a good read and I think the images and emotions it conjured within me will stick. I'm going to become a teacher and I want to be a kind one. Because so many of the really poignant scenes involved adults punishing children for being the victims of other children, I don't want to forget Lloyd's characters. I want to learn to be kind from them. And, if I can't manage to teach a lick of US history, maybe I can teach kindness.