A List of Cages

by Robin Roe

I remember our first-grade teacher telling the class during circle time that something wonderful had happened to Charlie that morning. He’d become a big brother. He responded by flinging himself into the center of the circle and screeching, My life is ruined!

Mom listened, nodding, then she said there was no such thing as a mean child, only an unhappy one. “But you don’t know,” I told her. “You didn’t see.” “I don’t have to see. I know.” She wouldn’t tell me how she knew, but she swore that Jared deserved nothing but my sympathy. The next day, when he kicked down my tower, I put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” I said. “I know you’re just unhappy.” Then he punched me in the eye.

kayak angst. I looked it up on a school computer and read that it’s an anxiety disorder you can only find among the Inuit sailors of Greenland. The sailor feels fine as he’s heading out in his one-man boat, but he panics once land disappears. Disoriented and alone, unable to see a shore in either direction, he’s terrified.

It took a few meetings with our reading buddies before I realized that kindergartners were a lot like manic-depressives, vacillating between euphoria and despair with terrifying speed. It was overwhelming to a lot of us, and one time Charlie got sent to the office for saying “This is hell.”

“Why do they always do that in movies?” I ask. “Do what?” “After they stab someone, they take their knife and wipe it on their shirt. Why? So the next person they stab doesn’t get an infection?” “Adam,” Charlie moans, “stop talking.”

“Well, you don’t feel things like normal people.”