Head Over Flats - Benjamin

I fell in love with Benjamin in the first grade. He was a pale, quiet boy with dark hair and light eyes. He rode the bus to school, which I suppose made him exotic. Everyone I knew walked to school. This is probably because ‘everyone I knew’ consisted of the children who lived on my block and comprised most of my class.

Benjamin would get off the bus each morning with the other country kids and follow them over to the part of the playground that had been unofficially designated for their own particular use. It wasn’t that they stood awkwardly in a group like discarded toy soldiers, but they kept to their side of the playground and we kept to ours. To me, their games always seemed more subdued and orderly (and therefore less fun) than ours, so I never bothered to explore the mystery of our segregation. I would usually be running pell-mell through the townie turf, playing a variant of tag or just wreaking havoc, too busy to notice.

Once class started and Benjamin was separated from his brothers, sisters and fellow farm kids, he seemed to grow even quieter. Mrs Flett, our first-grade teacher tended to dote gently on him, always asking him in her softest voice if he wanted to say something.

“Benjamin Grey, do you have a question?”

“Benjamin Grey, do you know the answer?”

A bright and perfectly polite kid, he never failed to answer a direct address but I don’t think he ever volunteered anything. Our teacher always had to prompt him. Maybe he was shy, I never knew. And Mrs Flett preferred to use his full name. There was no other Benjamin in our class. Still, she never once called him Benjamin or Ben, always Benjamin Grey. I don’t know why.  

But his name was why I loved him-something about the way it sounded; I loved saying it. There was magic in his name.

Every morning as we left behind our designated peer groups and lined up (single-file) to be let inside I’d ask, “How are you today, Benjamin Grey?”

At recess I would call, “Time to go play, Benjamin Grey!”

When asking for his opinion, “What do you say, Benjamin Grey?”

Perhaps it’s odd to love someone because his name is easy to rhyme. It helped that he smiled at me every time I used his name, in spite of the fact that it was silly and doubtlessly more than a little tiresome, Benjamin smiled every single time.

Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love. (Mother Teresa)