Ordinarily I wouldn’t pay attention, but there was a paragraph in the paper about needing volunteers to visit area preschools and read to the kids during this event.
Well I adore children and love reading so I couldn't resist. Naturally, all the schools within a ten mile radious were taken, but feeling brave with my updated GPS, I refused directions and said I'd get there.
And I did--after my coveted machine dropped me off at a corner in front of three churches miles away from any known landmark, and I ended up calling the school and writing down the streets. But I got there and found thirty beautiful three and four year olds sitting in a half circle waiting for me.
The school system had supplied the book along with a little bag of supplies that included a twelve inch coconut tree and a bunch of Velcro letters that I was supposed to stick against the trunk. One of the teachers helped me while the kids politely waited on the floor.
The story was about each of the letters running to the branches and making the tree so heavy that it fell to the ground. Got the plot?
It took a few minutes to finish attaching the letters, and while we were doing it, one little girl raises her hand and says, “I like your shoes.”
I smiled and said thank you.
Then another girl said, “I like your shoes.” I thanked her too.
A boy raised his hand and said he also liked them, then another girl.
Then the whole group--all thirty of them--began saying it, some loudly, some murmuring, and it sounded like a mantra, “I like your shoes, I like your shoes, I like your shoes…”
It went on and on.
Pursing my lips to keep from laughing, I carried the tree to the front and sat on one of the children’s chairs.
I began reading, expecting the children to talk out loud because that’s what kids do. “The ‘a’ is running to the tree,” one boy said. “The ‘w's’ falling down.”
I let them say what they wanted, making sure each child saw the picture on the page I was holding.
Another little girl raised her hand. I said, "Yes?" She said nothing. I said, “Yes?" again, and she remained silent, yet leaned urgently forward waving her hand in the air.
I looked at the teacher. She said, “Ignore it. She just practices raising her hand.”
Other children began raising their hands too. No one had anything to say.
At the end I asked the group, what is the first letter of the alphabet? Nobody knew. Then I put it another way, “When you say your abc’s, which letter comes first?”
No answer.
“When you’re first in line, where are you?”
Silence.
“When you’re in the front of the line, where are you standing?”
“You’re in the middle!” one kid yelled. Then the others start yelling, “You’re in the middle, you’re in the middle!”
Finally, one little girl said, “You’re at the beginning.”
“The beginning,” I repeated, exactly where these children were.
What a long road ahead, I thought, but what an adventure.
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