Teddy And Roosevelt

They call it Friends Group. But there are no friends, and there is no group. Just me, a state-funded Social Worker, and another sixth grader the kids call Sweaty Teddy. We sit in a converted cinderblock office between the furnace and the chapel and listen to the muffled sounds of the rest of the middle school having actual recess outside. On the desk, Ms. Judi has placed a stress ball, a point-to-the bad touch doll, a box of tissues, and a bowl of candy. She has been meeting with me individually every Monday, for forty-five minutes of stress-inducing awkward silence, since I transferred from Rosa Parks Elementary. Teddy is a Friends Group veteran. According to Tommy Stanick, my assigned locker partner, Teddy has been going to the nut ward since third grade when he threatened a teacher with an X-ACTO Knife in art class.

Ms. Judi decided to put Teddy and me in a group session so we could dialogue. So far, I’ve learned that dialoguing usually just means Ms. Judi repeats the last thing I say in the form of a question.

“How are you feeling today Roosevelt?”

“I dunno. Little anxious I guess.”

“So, you’re feeling a little anxious?”

I nod. She writes something down. Teddy unwraps another piece of candy and pops it in his mouth. To escape his hard candy crunches, I do what I always do when I don’t know what to do — I pick up my book and begin to read.

“The Strenuous Life,” she says.

I nod.

“Still reading it,” she says.

I nod.

“Can you read us something?”

I open the book to any page and close my eyes, “far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

“That’s impressive.” She says.

“Teddy Roosevelt was an impressive man,” I say.

“No, that you memorized that passage.”

I nod.

Without looking up, Teddy slides one of the hard candies he has taken from the bowl over to me. I accept the gift. As I place the book back into my backpack, the edge of another brittle page flakes off and flutters to the floor. When the firemen left, they gave me and my mom anything of my dad’s that they could salvage. His watch from Wayne State, a few teaching awards, his master’s degree diploma, and his soggy, signed first edition of which he read to me every night before