Craig Smith

 I

A fishbowl and one minute of silence

in the hallway of a rural schoolhouse

(our room was a converted utility shed

that fit six students, myself and an aide)

was how we spent Remembrance Day

assembly, away from the student mass

because it would have been too much

for Leif, he was too prone to cry out or

be driven to distraction (his sympathy

overflowed) so we stood, the two of us,

by the doorway looking out to the yard

but more often turning our attention

to the fishbowl and the little orange fish

bobbing inside, and I almost broke the

silence by wanting to remind Leif of the

last day of last year when I put the bowl

on the roof of my car as I was packing

resources in the boot and nearly drove

away save for Leif calling out to alert me

of the situation but also to follow up by

saying I shouldn't feel bad because he

is just as often forgetful with these things.

II

When medical interns and pre-service teachers

visited our class to observe

they would sometimes, on occasion,

ask me which students could look at a tree

and know how many leaves were attached

or who the lad was that could listen

to the drone of an air conditioning unit

and know it was tuned to C sharp

but what they never thought to ask, and

it's no shame on them, they

only knew what movies and talk shows

presented of twice exceptional prodigiousness

and how genius was mathematical or musical

or memory based, and it isn't like they

needed the kids to be exceptional, I

don't want that to be the impression of

our visitors, they had simply heard things about

kids like these, but this meant

that they missed what was another

form of youthful brilliance, students who

were savants in knowing how to be kind.

III

What does it mean to have a talent for altruism,

well I think of times like when a new student in

the mainstream part of the school dropped his

pencil box as he crossed the playground during

a tour he and his mother were given by a deputy

principal and how Leif ran over and helped pick

up the octagonal rods of blue and pink and gold

and put them all back in the box in the very same

order they originally were, Leif informing the new

student how he had a pencil box just like this at

home and how nice it was, how well the silver and

green went together when drawing metallic trains.

IV

A couple of months ago I was coming out of a pub

and who do I see sitting out front

with a couple of other lads - Leif,

early twenties (I hadn't seen him since he was ten

when he moved schools) rattling the ice around

a glass of bourbon and coke, laughing with mates.

He immediately recognised me and called out with

delight if I would join them, sure

so long as I wasn't going to cramp

their style, he laughed and I tell you what, the way

he interacted with everybody there, when he knew

someone was wrong but didn't correct them, when

he saw an opportunity to bring someone into the

conversation, this might all just

sound like good manners, being

raised in the right way, general social capabilities

shared by many, and you might be on the money,

because at twenty-three it's almost expected, but

at six or seven, amongst the uncertain and random

episodes of caustic juvenile rabble

that can befall the springtime years,

when you meet a kindness savant

they stand out amongst their peers.