Overheard in a Classroom: You can't script this stuff.

I volunteer in a reading mentors program at the local elementary school twice a week.

Now, today I'm sitting with my first-session student at a desk on one side of a big, blue, wooden divider. I cannot see the mentors or students who sit on the other side, but I can generally recognize them by their voices.

But today, there was a new-ish mentor that I had not met sitting on the other side of the divider. 

I never saw the young man who was assigned to her, but I did not recognize his voice as being one of the ones I'm used to. He was reading some sort of booklet on geography with his mentor. (Now, keep in mind that these kids are seven-and-eight year olds, so it wasn't anything too terrible. Or rather, it shouldn't have been. The little boy evidently thought that world geography ought to be rewritten.

I heard the mentor ask the boy if he could point out Brazil on the map in the book. His reply? "No. These maps! They lie to me!" Startled, the woman gently pointed out that he really shouldn't be telling a book that it was lying. There was the sound of a metal chair being pushed back, and the boy shouted, "THESE MAPS ARE LIES!" My eight-year-old turns and looks around the corner of the divider, then turns and gives me this wide-eyed stare, then giggles. I put my energy into trying to get her to focus on her lesson again, dismissing from my mind the unusual dialogue going on next to us.

Until this happened:

Very curiously, the boy asked, "What is metal?" By the sound of his voice, I pictured him tilting his head to one side, perched in his chair. Flustered, the woman trying to help him with his lesson floundered for an answer. She began to mumble about playgrounds and table-legs, cutting off her words mid-sentence several times. Finally, she mumbled, "Your chair is metal." The little one seemed to accept that for the moment, but about two seconds later, I heard him pipe up, "Are you metal?" Shocked, the poor mentor managed, after a stunned silence, to say, "No dear, I am human." "No?" the boy asked thoughtfully, "Well I am. My head is like a rock."

I kid you not, that is literally what he said. And I never even saw him. I have no idea who he was.

Needless to say, the mentor had no ready reply for this, and tried to redirect him to his lesson. I was sort of glad that my own student was not overly distracted by this.

Things that I say often enough to be weird.

If there were ever a plush version of me with a sound chip, there's probably six or seven phrases it would spit out.

Dare to look upon the horror that is:

the MyRetroGeek doll.

Thankfully not a real thing.

Yet.

Godzilla and other acquired tastes

I'm sure we can all agree that there are some things that take time to get used to.

The first time you try spinach, for instance (not recommended by this author, but there are plenty that do like it, I'm sure.) Or when a new pet joins the family. And then there's some things that take years to adjust to.

Like Godzilla.

When I was little, sometimes my family and I would go to Old Town, a theme park in Kissimmee, FL. There were small rollercoasters, old-fashioned taffy-pulling places, and an A&W restaurant where you could get root beer out of a tap. (I've always loved that!)

Now, it may have changed a fair amount since the last time I was there, but I remember there being this arcade/playplace that started on one side of the street and bridged over the top to connect to another arcade on the other side. We kids would go climbing up one side and down the other, sliding down the slides contentedly for what seemed like hours. But then there was always one thing that made us pause.

On the other end of the tunnel-bridge and slide, there was a cardboard cutout of Godzilla. (The classic one from the '50s). It had some sort of motion detector on it, and whenever people got close, it played the classic Godzilla roar. You know the one I mean.

So here's a little kid, about five years old, and I'm sliding down this slide and I hear that. 

Total and complete NOPE moment. I don't remember exactly what I would do in response, but I always hear Mom and Dad say it as, "Oh yeah, you guys hated that thing!"

So I imagine something like this.

And yet, here I am, years later, counting down the days until the Godzilla remake is released in theaters. I am definitely willing to shell out the cash to see that on the big screen! Go figure: the Godzilla roar is now one of my favorite sound effects, along with the classic noise from Transformers (you know, the 8 hz repeated sound whenever they change forms? I don't really know if there's a name for it.)

I guess it was an acquired taste.

Noah: the Preschool Edition.

With all the controversial mishmash I've been hearing about the "Noah" movie, I thought I'd share the story from the perspective of a five-year-old.

A little background here, my neighbor got called into work one Sunday and asked me to keep an eye on her little girl since her husband and son were out of town for the weekend. I took the five year old to church with me and dropped her off in the Sunday School class, since I was volunteering in the nursery that day. After the service, I went back down the hall to get her and found her standing at the door with a paper Ark on a popsicle stick, beaming proudly. "Hey there, (name)," I said, "What've you got there?" And she proudly informed me it was "a Noah". Once I'd put her in her carseat and we were on the road, I glanced into the rearview mirror and asked her to tell me what she'd learned in class that day. 

The following is, as near as I can remember it, the basic transcript of what she told me.

Little Girl:  "Well, the world went bad, and e'eryfing was wotten." (Rotten). "And it made God sad. So God sended a fwood to wipe off the earff."

Me: "Right! And what about Noah? Do you remember who he was?"

Little Girl: "Yeah, Noah. Umm...he was good, and God told him to build a boat."

Me: "Yeah! What kind of boat was it? Was it a big boat?"

Little Girl:  "Yesss...it was a awk. And God bwought all the lots of animals on it."

Me: "Why did He do that, (name)?"

Little Girl: "Um...so they would be safe from all the watew."

Me: "Do you know how long they were on the ark?"

Little Girl: "I dunno...twenty-seven days?"

Me: "Forty days and forty nights, actually."

Little Girl: "Phwaw! Fowty days an' fowty nights! Yeah, an' then they went bump! And they landed on, on a mountain, and Noah sended out a bird, but it didn't find anyfing. Then he sended it out again, but it didn't find anyfing. Then it went away to build a nest."

Me: "Good job! What did God put in the sky to show He wouldn't flood the world again?"

Little Girl: "....I don't wemembew."

Me: "It was a rainbow."

Little Girl: "Ohhh! That's wight, a wainbow!"

She then proceeded to very carelessly say something baffling. (I've noticed with small children that very often when they say something deep or startling, it's in such a nonchalant way, as if it isn't strange at all to them!)

She nodded her head and said, "Just like Eastew!" Confused, I asked her, "What was just like Easter, honey?" Drumming her feet against the back of my seat, she said, "Last Eastew, God telled me He was gonna put a wainbow in the sky for me, so I looked out the window and it was up there!"

I had no idea what to say. How do you answer that?! 

I love hearing Bible stories retold by kids.