The reason Mother was worried was because although Totto-chan had only just started school,
she had already been expelled. Fancy being expelled from the first grade!
It had happened only a week ago. Mother had been sent for by Totto-chan’s homeroom teacher,
who came straight to the point. “Your daughter disrupts my whole class. I must ask you to take
her to another school.” The pretty young teacher sighed. “I’m really at the end of my tether.”
Mother was completely taken aback. What on earth did Totto-chan do to disrupt the whole class,
she wondered!
Blinking nervously and touching her hair, cut in a short pageboy style, the teacher started to
explain. “Well, to begin with, she opens and shuts her desk hundreds of times. I’ve said that no
one is to open or shut their desk unless they have to take something out or put something away.
So your daughter is constantly taking something out and putting something away - taking out or
putting away her notebook, her pencil box, her textbooks, and everything else in her desk. For
instance, say we are going to write the alphabet, your daughter opens her desk, takes out her
notebook, and bangs the top down. Then she opens her desk again, puts her head inside, gets our
a pencil, quickly shuts the desk, and writes an ‘A.’ If she’s written it badly or made a mistake she
opens the desk again, gets out an eraser, shuts the desk, erases the letter, then opens and shuts the desk again to put away the eraser–all at top speed. When she’s written the ‘A’ over again, she puts every single item back into the desk, one by one. She puts away the pencil, shuts the desk,then opens it again to put away the notebook. Then, when she gets to the next letter, she goes through it all again–first the note-book, then the pencil, then the eraser–opening and shutting her desk every single time. It makes my head spin. And I can’t scold her because she opens and shuts it each time for a reason.”
The teacher’s long eyelashes fluttered even more as if she were reliving the scene in her mind.
It suddenly dawned on Mother why Totto-chan opened and shut her desk so often. She
remembered how excited Totto-chan had been when she came home from her first day at school.
She had said, “School’s wonderful! My desk at home has drawers you pull out, but the one at
school has a top you lift up. It’s like a box, and you can keep all sorts of things inside. It’s super!”
Mother pictured her delightedly opening and shutting the lid of this new desk. And Mother didn’t think it was all that naughty either. Anyway, Totto-chan would probably stop doing it as soon as the novelty wore off. But all she said to the teacher was, “I’ll speak to her about it.”
The teacher’s voice rose in pitch as she continued, “I wouldn’t mind if that was all.”
Mother flinched as the teacher leaned forward.
“When she’s not making a clatter with her desk, she’s standing up. All through class!”
“Standing up! Where?” asked Mother, surprised.
“At the window,” the teacher replied crossly.
“Why does she stand at the window?” Mother asked, puzzled.
“So she can invite the street musicians over!” she almost shrieked.
The gist of the teacher’s story was that after an hour of almost constantly banging her desk top,
Totto-chan would leave her desk and stand by the window, looking out. Then, just as the teacher
was beginning to think that as long as she was quiet she might just as well stay there, Totto-chan
would suddenly call out to a passing band of garishly dressed street musicians. To Totto-chan’s
delight and the teacher’s tribulation, the classroom was on the ground floor looking out on the
street. There was only a low hedge in between, so anyone in the classroom could easily talk to
people going by. When Totto-chan called to them, the street musicians would come right over to
the window. Whereupon, said the teacher, Totto-chan would announce the fact to the whole
room, “Here they are!” and all the children would crowd by the window and call out to the
musicians.
“Play something,” Totto-chan would say, and the little band, which usually passed the school
quietly, would put on a rousing performance for the pupils with their clarinet, gongs, drums, and
samisen, while the poor teacher could do little but wait patiently for the din to stop.
Finally, when the music finished, the musicians would leave and the students would go back to
their seats. All except Totto-chan. When the teacher asked, “Why are you still at the window?”
Totto-chan replied, quite seriously, “Another band might come by. And, anyway, it would be
such a shame if the others came back and we missed them.”
“You can see how disruptive all this is, can’t you?” said the teacher emotionally. Mother was
beginning to sympathize with her when she began again in an even shriller voice, “And then,
besides…
“What else does she do?” asked Mother, with a sinking feeling.
“What else?” exclaimed the teacher. “If I could even count the things she does I wouldn’t be
asking you to take her away.”
The teacher composed herself a little, and looked straight at Mother. “Yesterday, Totto-chan was standing at the window as usual, and I went on with the lesson thinking she was just waiting for the street musicians, when she suddenly called out to somebody, ‘What are you doing!’ From
where I was I couldn’t see who she was taking to, and I wondered what was going on. Then she
called out again, ‘What are you doing!’ She wasn’t addressing anyone in the road but somebody
high up somewhere. I couldn’t help being curious, and tried to hear the reply, but there wasn’t
any. In spite of that, your daughter kept on calling out, ‘What are you doing?’ so often I couldn’t
teach, so I went over to the window to see who your daughter was talking to. When I put my
head out of the window and looked up, I saw it was a pair of swallows making a nest under the
classroom eaves. She was talking to the swallows! Now, I understand children, and so I’m not
saying that talking to swallows is nonsense. It is just that I feel it is quite unnecessary to ask
swallows what they are doing in the middle of class.”
Before Mother could open her mouth to apologize, the teacher went on, “Then there was the
drawing class episode. I asked the children to draw the Japanese flag, and all the others drew it
correctly but your daughter started drawing the navy flag - you know the one with the rays.
Nothing wrong with that, I thought. But then she suddenly started to draw a fringe all around it.
A fringe! You know, like those fringes on youth group banners. She’s probably seen one
somewhere. But before I realized what she was doing, she had drawn a yellow fringe that went
right off the edge of the paper and onto her desk. You see, her flag took up most of the paper, so
there wasn’t enough room for the fringe. She took her yellow crayon and all around her flag she
made hundreds of strokes that extended beyond the paper, so that when she lifted up the paper
her desk was a mass of dreadful yellow marks that wouldn’t come off no matter how hard we
rubbed. Fortunately, the lines were only on-three sides.”
Puzzled, Mother asked quickly, “What do you mean, only three sides!”
Although she seemed to be getting tired, the teacher was kind enough to explain. “She drew a
flagpole on the left, so the fringe was only on three sides of the flag.”
Mother felt somewhat relieved. “I see, only on three sides.”
Whereupon the teacher said very slowly, emphasizing each word, “But most of the flagpole went
off the paper, too, and is still on the desk as well.”
Then the teacher got up and said coldly, as a sort of parting shot, “I’m not the only one who is
upset. The teacher in the classroom next door has also had trouble.”
Mother obviously had to do something about it. It wasn’t fair to the other pupils. She’d have to
find another school, a school where they would understand her little girl and teach her how to get
along with other people.
The school they were on their way to was one Mother had found after a good deal of searching.
Mother did not tell Totto-chan she had been expelled. She realized Totto-chan wouldn’t
understand what she had done wrong and she didn’t want her to get any complexes, so she
decided not to tell Totto-chan until she was grown-up. All Mother said was, “How would you
like to go to a new school! I’ve heard of a very nice one.”
“All right,” said Totto-chan, after thinking it over.
“But…”
“What is it now?” thought Mother. “Does she realize she’s been expelled?”
But a moment later Totto-chan was asking joyfully, “Do you think the street musicians will come
to the new school?”
