This is my son, Green-Hand Henderson, singing and playing guitar. Fall 2007.

Looking for the MP3 of Green-Hand singing Bob Dylan? Keep scrolling.

My Son’s Been Fired. And He’s Only in Elementary School.

Yesterday, Boy 2 handed me a note when he got off the school bus. During cleanup time in Art class, he’d painted his hand green. His punishment, besides the note I had to sign, was that he was “fired” from his new job of hall monitor. He’s been trying to get the job for two years and today would have been his first day. But due to the paint incident, he was told he lacked maturity for the job. Mr. Henderson thought this was a lot like taking the kids to Disneyland, and then, because they misbehaved in the parking lot, driving straight back to the airport and telling them they blew it. Sigh.

Pasha Malla’s Message to Green-Hand Henderson.

The Susan Henderson Weblog Wednesday Book Club, with Pasha Malla
This week’s book: Shame, by Salman Rushdie (Knopf, 1983)

I haven’t read this book. To be honest, I probably never will. I’ve given Rushdie a fair shake in the past, but I just can’t get into him. He strikes me as the kind of dude who might try to coax fellatio out of a lover by beating her across the face with his wang (i.e. none too subtly).

But lately I have been thinking about the emotion called “shame,” and figured a book by the same name would be a good way into it. The shame ruminations were sparked by our lovely and brilliant host, Susie, recounting the story of her caught-green-handed son. Here’s what I wrote to her after reading her post last week:

I betcha old Green-Hand Henderson remembers that for the rest of his life. I’ll never forget the time I was the only first grader not allowed to pet Kate Manson’s horse because the teacher thought I would do something weird.

It’s true. And I’ve never forgotten. I vividly remember sitting in the window of the classroom, gazing out into the parking lot where my classmates were taking turns stroking this magnificent, brown animal with a swooshy tail and teeth like Post-It notes. What would I have done? I recall feeling wronged, slighted, but also that the teacher knew something about me that I didn’t. Teachers were wise; they were like parents without the occasional domestic nudity.

A friend told me a similar story the other day. In this person’s ninth grade high school science class the teacher had each of the students bring in a urine sample; some sort of “experiment” was involved. So everyone showed up one day with the clear plastic receptacles they’d been given, now filled with piss and labeled with the name of their owners, and lined them up at the front of the classroom. Picture it: a row of thirty-or-so jars of what could be apple juice, maybe. Except one jar was very different. Whatever was inside looked more like a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale than anything even vaguely fruit-related; it was murky and chocolaty and stood out like a horse in an elementary school parking lot. Of course, the engineer of the weird pee was the kid in the class everyone already regarded as bizarre the kid I imagine with a glazed-over look running his hand through the flame of a Bunsen burner, painting pentagrams on his arms in Wite-Out, the usual stuff. The story spread, and the guy quickly became known around school as “Mr. Brown Pee.”

When my friend told this story we were in a bar with a bunch of people, and everyone was sort of drunk, and everyone laughed. Everyone, that is, except me, because this week all I’ve been thinking about is shame especially shame in the context of school. What make of moron teacher would fail to foresee the set-up? Jars of pee? From ninth graders? They might as well have been asked to bring in photographs of their genitals and run them up the flagpole. I’m sure the memory haunts the poor kid to this day.

For two years after finishing university I taught at an “alternative independent private school” in Toronto. This was a great place (all sorts of interesting people sent their kids there, from Margaret Atwood to Stephen Lewis), but it closed a few years ago when the husband of the couple who ran it turned gay. While the curriculum bordered on Wiccan (solstice celebrations, holding hands and the ceremonious burial of things all figured heavily), it did include an admirable effort to eliminate shame from the school-experience of the students. Punishment in the conventional sense was nonexistent; if kids farted in class, teachers would pipe up and take the blame.

On my first day, in order to learn the kids’ names, I played a game of going round and introducing each student in a ridiculous way to the others. (”Celia lives in a house made of boogers,” etc.) It was going well; the kids were laughing, and I was having fun. But in this class was a pallid, orange-haired asthmatic named Noel. My intro: “Noel’s dad is an alien, and he drives Noel to school in a spaceship.” The class roared. Noel, however, froze, and then exploded in a sudden and hysterical fit of wretched, gasping tears. “It’s not a spaceship!” he screamed between sobs. “It’s just a Volvo with a roof-rack!”

So I’ve been on both sides of school-based shame. And as a perpetrator of it upon a child, I know that I felt just as shameful as when I was deemed “too weird” to pet Kate Manson’s horse. But shame is such a limited word, one of those nouns that doesn’t have the clearly defined person/place/thing parameters of something like “rocking chair” or “Natalie Portman.” The shame you feel as a kid is more intense, because it feels as though it will never end. As adults we have perspective; we know that every emotion is ultimately fleeting “this too will pass” and all of that.

For kids, though, everything exists in a moment that seems potentially infinite. Shame, especially, is such an all-consuming emotion: it guts us, turns us inside-out, makes us question who we are and how we fit into the world. Slot that into a time in our lives when we’re just figuring out who we are, and it can be particularly devastating. Maybe that’s why these moments (and there are many, many others) from my childhood stand out the most, and become the things I’ve never forgotten.

Anyway, good luck, Green-Hand Henderson. I feel for you, brother. I really do.

For further reading/viewing:

Atwood, Margaret. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: House of Anansi, 1972.

Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. New York: Penguin Books, 1983.

Dirty Three. Horse Stories (audio recording). Touch & Go, 1996.

Lewis, Stephen. The Race Against Time. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2005.

McCulloch, Bruce. Shame-Based Man (audio recording). Atlantic Recording Corporation, 1995.

Hear Green-Hand’s Open-Mic Debut!

More bad news for Green-Hand Henderson.

Regular readers of this blog might remember how my son painted his hand green in art class and was subsequently fired as hall monitor because his green hand showed he was too immature to handle the job.

And now, on the bill from the dentist are two words: “Thumb habit.” This means: No more thumb. No more thumb while holding his little stuffed puppy that is thin as a handkerchief. I’m not ready for him to be so mature.

But there is some good news. Green-Hand Henderson made his debut at our local open-mic over the weekend. I hope I’ve uploaded the MP3 correctly. Here’s Green-Hand singing Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. That’s him playing the guitar, too.

If you can’t get the mp3 to load, you can click here instead. This is a recording made right before open mic (though the picture is of him performing). He had kind of an unexpected burst of confidence when he got on stage and really belted it out and then jumped right in to The Yellow Submarine after that. It was awesome, though worrisome when people started whistling and yelling his name. The last thing we need is another Henderson taking the low-paying, chaotic path of the artist.Happy Birthday to Green-Hand Henderson!

I’ve got a great big guest from THE NEW YORKER tomorrow, so I’m going to run my birthday wishes for Green-Hand Henderson a day early.

So here he is eating leaves via his brother, drawing on the kitchen floor, wading in the Pacific, posing during his ruby slipper phase, singing in the Bronx Opera, singing in Chinese school last Friday, and hanging out at a film festival. Feel free to click on the link to hear his cover of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues.