extra credit kid

My new friend Leah can’t speak sign-language, but she could when she was young.

When she was ten, Leah’s 5th grade teacher used the hour after lunch to teach her class the beautiful language of the deaf. Even though everyone in the class could hear – even though they all listened to their radios at home and turned their TVs louder than their mothers would have liked – this particular over-achieving educator decided she wanted her class to know sign language. She wanted to teach their still innocent hands how to do something constructive. She wanted them to learn gestures that would communicate without offending the elderly. She wanted them to learn sign language.

The children loved it. Once, during a silent game of Ring Around the Rosie, they even got so rowdy that the teacher had to remind them to use their inside hands.

After the first week of silent speaking lessons, one of the 5th graders told the teacher that his grandmother was deaf. He said that everyone in his family knew how to speak sign language. He had been doing it for years. Sometimes, before bed, he even used his hands to read out loud to his grandmother.

But not the Bible. All the whosoevers and wherefores made his knuckles crack.

The teacher was amazed. Like an exotic exchange student from a faraway (and quiet) land, the boy was a native who already knew the language. He was a natural tutor. And so she offered bonus points to any child who spent time with the boy whose hands could talk.

He was the extra credit kid.

Apparently, within hours of the teacher’s edict, the extra credit kid became the most popular kid in class. His lunch table was always full. His seat was always saved. He never spent recess jumping rope by himself.

Every afternoon the extra credit kid leapt off a bus full of friends, eager to tell his grandmother how popular he was at school. With exhausted fingers he bragged about how everyone wanted to spend time with him because he was good at something. Because he knew something. Because he could do something no one else could.

Because he was extra credit.

***

I heard the story of the extra credit kid on a Saturday, three days before an important job interview. Although Leah lost contact with the boy sometime during puberty, I found myself needing to believe that in his epilogue the extra credit kid passed from the 5th grade into adulthood as a successful worker, a confident lover, and a compassionate friend all because someone was wise enough to recognize his extra credit.

“Hitler was a nasty exception,” I convinced myself. “Most people really do look to see the potential in other people. The extra credit kid lived happily ever after. So will I.”

Three days later, I changed my mind.

Sitting on a park bench an hour after the unfortunate interview, I thought about the extra credit kid and was forced to wonder what happened when he crossed back from extra to ordinary. What did he do when the children all mastered singing Happy Birthday with their hands and didn’t need him anymore? How did he react when the teacher’s arthritis forced her to stop teaching sign-language and start teaching something more practical, like meteorology?

After a month of mailed resumes and more silence than response, I need to know what the kid did when he stopped being extra credit. I need to know what he told his grandmother that night, after a day of learning about weather systems, an hour sitting alone at the lunch table, and a recess spent jumping rope by himself.

Did her ever find that calling, that hobby, or that unexpected other person who reminded him that he is still, and will always be, extra credit?

For all of our sakes, I hope so.