I so like to think back on when I taught pre-school at the YWCA. We always had an interesting group. One day I was teaching them about birds in the winter. I asked them if they knew what a robin was. A little boy named Collin Kittrell raised his hand and waved it enthusiastically. I said, "Collin, what is a robin?" And Collin replied, "He shoots arrows." Collin meant Robin Hood, his favorite and mine too. The entire class laughed. And then there was the time we were discussing animals. I asked the question, "Do cows eat grass?" All the kids said "Yes". So I thought I'd be clever and ask if people ate grass. A little boy named Dominic raised his hand. "Do people eat grass?" I asked him again. "No," he said. I asked him why not. "Because they don't have enough legs," was his clever answer. The entire class laughed. We did a lot of laughing.
We were coming into class from recess one day and we always had the children take off their shoes. One little boy named Eric had massive knots in his shoestrings. He asked me if I would get them out. So I stooped over to attempt the nearly impossible, muttering, "Oh Lord, oh Lord." Eric looked at me very puzzledly and then thought about it and said, "Are you calling me Lord?" I fought to remain composed, but I had to laugh. "No, Eric," I told him. "I am not calling you Lord." He smiled. "Oh, that's good," he said.
I always had fun with the kids when they would find a penny out on the playground. Because my name is Penni, they would come and show them to me. I would kid around with them and say, "Okay, hand it over." They would looked puzzled and ask why. I would say, "What's my name?" They would say, Penni. "Okay, if my name is Penni and you found a penny, it belongs to me because it has my name." They would think it over and then reluctantly say, "Okay, here." Then I would laugh and give it back to them. You would have thought they'd found a pirate's treasure.
We attempted to make applesauce in a blender one autumn day. Like a goof, I was impatient and took the lid off and stuck in the wooden spoon to push down the apples before the blade stopped whirling. Big mistake. Everybody looked up to the ceiling where it had shot up and was coming back down in large splats. We laughed about it. What else can you do?
There are days when I do miss being a teacher. It's the unexpected pleasures you get out of little impromptu quips from the oh-so-innocent children. I can only hope they miss me the same way. I know I was such a doof at times. But that's what made it fun.
