The Wikiness

After a morning of organized learning, I’d walk two and a half blocks down Harvard Street and open my back door into–what? 

Some days, mom-borne chaos, a hallucinating or raging crazy lady indifferent to children’s needs; other days, a housekeeper employed by dad to provide the basics during mom’s hospitalizations. Most days, an unsupervised hour for the three youngest siblings in which “may the best forager win” was foremost in my mind.

If I were lucky, I got to down this repast with an ice-cold bottle of pop. If I weren’t so fortunate, a glass of 2%, unless it had gone bad, in which case, a glass of orange juice (which I found out was sometimes spiked with vodka by my mom). Failing even OJ, then a glass of tap water.

 Never anything leafy or green, nor a serving of fruit.

With my meal giving physical sustenance, I often read to feed my brain–the sports section of the Tribune, Time magazine, whatever novel I was in at the time.  Sometimes, I’d bring my meal down into the cool basement, where I sat on a stuffed chair and watched the only programming that wasn’t news or a soap opera: Bozo’s Circus. 

Lucky for me, the school’s social worker, Mrs. Mengle, intervened in my crazy life using the lunch hour to feed my interests, expand my knowledge, and nourish my soul, She’d already intervened with my older sister (after a particularly awful interaction with mom), and now Mrs. Mengele was inviting me to her quiet office with the big windows overlooking Ridgeland Avenue traffic. 

I relaxed in a chair facing those windows, reassured that someone in the building was looking out for me. “Tell me about yourself, Drew” Soon, I was bringing my PB&J and pop into her office over lunch, at least once a week. As I consumed, she asked about my life, and I found that I was happy for a sympathetic ear.

She recognized my creativity and gave her office as a studio where I wrote musical productions for the school–one showing the dangers of drugs, another staging drama amid the coming of Easter. One of my Easter show tunes went, “Ronnie Rotteneggs, you are bad/You make chickens feel so sad…”

In our lunches, Mrs. Mengle allowed me room and materials to create and explore. By year two of our lunches, I’d become conversant with the riches of the district’s media collection accessed through her authority: endless filmstrips and 16mm history and science films. She encouraged me to invite my friends and thus began a series of war and nature documentaries that I curated for them.

Thank goodness for this social worker and her lunchtime intervention!