Procrastination

Somehow I believed that I could promise my new students back their papers on a schedule to rival my old, CC, block-class schedule for returning papers...yet not keep the kind of late-night grading hours I did at CC. What delirium.

So in between papers, I return to Ye Olde Blog for reprieve. There is much to catch up on: birthdays (Alice, Jesus, me), exciting skills mastered, promising professional developments. As usual when I'm overwhelmed by being behind, I'll begin with the most recent good kid conversations.

Like tonight in the car on the way home from gymnastics. A three-mile trip during which we got:

A: Santa sure is quiet.

G: Yes, he's very good at that. I won't say quiet as a mouse [we just had one such make his appearance in our house last night, to our mutual hysteria, and he wasn't quiet]. Santa's even quieter.

E: Maybe "quiet as a mouse" is right, because it might mean not perfectly quiet, but pretty quiet...like a mouse. Santa is big. He's probably not perfectly quiet, but pretty quiet.

A: But what about those big black boots?

E: Maybe he has special marshmallows on the bottom of them.

A: No, they would get all fuzzy. You don't want your marshmallows to get all fuzzy.

E: It's not like he eats those marshmallows.

A: No, Edith. You don't want fuzzy marshmallows on the bottoms of your boots. You might slip.

... [a half-mile passes] ...

A: Mom, who's our hero? I forget his name. He has light brown skin.

G [guessing about the school curriculum]: You mean Martin Luther King?

A: Yes!

G: Do you know why he's a hero?

A: I forget.

Edith then launched into the greatest seven-year-old explanation of racial injustice pitched to a four-year-old sister. "Alice, do you know people with brown skin?" Alice: "Yes, Mia!" "Well, Alice, back in Martin Luther King's time you and Mia couldn't even go to school together, because she's black--that's what they call people with brown skin--and you're white--that's what they call people with blond or tan skin....And Martin Luther King...Mom, tell her about Rosa Parks..."

Bedtime story was a kid's Rosa Parks book, to which Alice listened intently. Then she wanted the one about the March on Washington.

Then one expression of anxiety about the mouse, and they both conked out (a minor miracle).