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user-inactivated  ·  2887 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Julia Baird: Being Dishonest About Ugliness  ·  

    Two p.m. Vivian Jackson’s class, Room 207.

    What Calvin can’t see: He can’t see the small, pretty girl sitting opposite him, the one who is wearing little rows of red, yellow and blue barrettes shaped like airplanes in her braided hair. He can’t see the line of small, green plants growing in yellow pots all along the sunny window sill. And he can’t see Mrs. Jackson in her rose-pink suit and pink enameled earrings shaped like little swans.

    (“Were they really shaped like little swans?” he will ask later.)

    But Calvin can feel the warm spring breeze—invisible to everyone’s eyes, not just his—blowing through the window and he can hear the tapping of a young oak tree’s branches against the window. He can hear Mrs. Jackson’s pleasant, musical voice and, later, if you ask him what she looks like, he will say, “She’s nice.”

A Boy of Unusual Vision -- indeed.