Kids Boycott The Darndest Things!

If you know me, you most likely know that I love the chilluns. This wasn't always the case. I think I actually used to fear them a lot. The more I've worked with them over the years, the more I've learned about how they learn, how they see the world, and how justified my fears of them were. My basic advice: never underestimate a 5-year old. NEVER!

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a wee bit. Kids are actually pretty great and sometimes innocent. At the same time they're also much smarter and more powerful than we think. Talking to a kindergartner is a humbling and challenging thing. They catch everything you say, which means you have to be extra cautious about how you answer. For example. One little boy in the kindergarten class I work with called a girl bossy. Let's be honest... the girl WAS a total control freak. She was pretty upset though. I told the boy not to call someone bossy, no matter how bossy they were because calling people names makes you mean too. Yeah, yeah. Get all judgy. Clearly I was not already a pro with kids at the time, and I'm definitely still learning. You can guess what happened though... The smart little bugger twisted my words and told the girl, "Miss Rachel says I can't call you bossy even though you are." Don't worry. I corrected my misdeed, and he figured out that I meant always be nice even if you feel as though someone else has mistreated you. (When all else fails, refer to the Golden Rule. It would've saved me a LOT of embarrassment and trouble had I remembered the proper phrasing at the time.)

The fear of kids definitely went up after that experience.

The thing that scares me most is how much brilliance and profundity can fit into such compact-sized versions of humans. I mean, *what* ARE they? They're totally the little blue Priuses of the human world. This would also explain how they never run out of energy... they're fuel efficient! Just one Tang, and they can do 30 mpg on a standard highway at even the highest of speeds, if you catch my drift.. my Tokyo Drift (As in Fast & The Furious II). Duh-duh-chin! Moving on...

Another example of power run amuck in little ones happened when I was working with a 1st grade class. A little boy wrote a nice get well card to a boy that'd had the flu for some 2 weeks. It roughly went as follows, "Dear Name of Boy Which Now Slips Rachel's Mind, I hope you feel better sometime (not SOON as most people would say). You are a great kid and also pretty cool. I am Nicholas!" First of all, take time to appreciate the fact that he signed like a Roman emperor. No last name. No distracting, falsely sentimental closing words. He got to the point, expressed his own significance, and added a PUNCH to close the letter. All with three words. It made me think... What happened to my bold, unhampered wiles and wills? I WAS Rachel! And that directness got me into troubles at times. But it was real. It was honest. This just proves that we have much to learn from even youngins... We can especially see what we were like once and how simple it would be to be that radical again.

The primest thing of all happened in class the day after MLK Jr. Day though. The little 5-year olds were watching a documentary about Martin Luther King Jr.'s life. At the portion of the film that discussed the boycotting of the buses, the teacher paused the video. She explained what it was and told them what a picket sign was. Then they of course started talking again, and the teacher got distracted by paperwork and the random kids that always ask to go to the bathroom even though clearly it's allowed. Then something I never would have expected happened. I thought they got nothing out of the movie. I doubted I would have understood the significance of boycotting when I was a wee one. Buuut...

Raine, the littlest of the littles, pounded her fists rhythmically on her desk and bellowed, "Un-pause it! Un-pause it! Un-pause it!" in time with the banging. Soon other small, yet gutsy voices joined in the "protest." More and more children began pounding the tables. Then they began following her lead as she stood, continuing to shout her demands. She then began lifting her arms up and down, pretending to be holding a sign with words demanding justice. Others followed suit, and soon the entire class was at the front of the classroom walking in a circle, shouting their desires and raising their imaginary picket signs. It was in that moment I realized that a person's a person, no matter how small. No matter how young. We all have something to stay. We all can be powerful. Yet somehow between 5 and 19 I lost my ability to grasp things quickly, listen, and express what I thought in the moment, mostly due to fear. I lost the idea that it was okay to challenge others and to lead others even at the risk of their judgment. Man, I want to be 5 again. Even though the teacher had no idea what the kids were exclaiming, they were saying *something*... something they believed. Yeah, this seems a little bit hyperbolic, but it really did change my perception of kids forever. They grasp things we don't and see things we won't. There will never stop being a need for their lessons, no matter how old or wise we allegedly become. Be bold like a 5-year old, people. Listen and react. Don't buy everything you hear, and challenge the things that seem wrong because they just might be. Wellll, that's that.

Homework CAN Be Cool

The following is an assignment I completed for my Mass Media & Society class. I had to make an autobiography/memo-schmemo thaaang. It's written in 3rd person because it had to be. I hope you can dig it. Heeeere goes:

BRIEFING MEMO Rachel Wilder

BORN: March 10, 1992

SUMMARY: full-time student at Belmont University, majoring in Religion and the Arts, creative force to be reckoned with, sarcasm enthusiast, concussionist, and klutz.

QUOTE: “I dig music.”

DETAILS: Born a whopping 8 lbs. 11 oz., Rachel always felt she had a lot to give the world. Her parents, 2 sisters, and even she realized from the get-go that she was different. When adults asked her questions, she knew the proper polite response, but instead, she offered an honest one. At the age of 2 her pediatrician asked her older sisters and her if they liked his brand new shirt. The oldest said, “Oh, yes. You look very handsome.” The second said, “That is a great shirt.” Rachel said, “That shirt does nothing for you.”

That same year the Wilders packed up and moved to Miami (most likely a decision unrelated to the “doctor incident”), and shortly thereafter Rachel began to attend pre-school. She quickly developed an affinity for animals of any kind, but especially dogs—Rottweilers to be exact. For one assignment, all of the students needed to color in an image the teacher prepared of a dog on construction paper. Though Rachel did not color in the lines in most areas of her life, she took this matter seriously, modeling her dog after an actual dog breed, despite the looming peer pressure to make a “pink retriever.” Her interest in art did not stop there. For Mother’s Day all the children were supposed to make painted clay pins for their mothers; they were allowed to make a flower or a heart. Rachel, however, decided to make a Flubber pin as her new favorite movie had just come out. Her mother couldn’t have been more proud, and her mother’s shirt couldn’t have been more ripped due to the density of the artwork. Needless to say, it was a source of pride that never left the home.

At the age of 6 her family once more went for the nomadic lifestyle, picking up and moving to Ft. Lauderdale. When asked to comment on her experience there Rachel said very little. After all, the family only lived there for 6 months.

Next was Orlando, the home of Disney World, which is the home of Mickey Mouse. While the Wilders agreed that it was a vibrant city, “it was also chock-full of confused tourists that lacked the capacity to simultaneously drive and read their Magic Kingdom maps.” Rachel made some of her best friends there. She continued to feel “different” from her classmates though. This was evident when her class studied the endangered animals list. There seemed to be about 6 panda projects, 5 koala projects, and 5 leopard projects. She found this boring and redundant, so she chose the smelliest animal in the world, the Tasmanian Devil and suggested the Komodo Dragon for others.

At the age of 15, her sisters had both gone off to college. Her parents and she moved yet again to the hustling and bustling Atlanta, or the quite accurately named “Hotlanta.” She attended high school, and it was there that she rediscovered her passion for arts, which were neglected at her previous school. For her portfolio she needed to develop a theme or concentration. Finally, a light bulb quite literally went off. Her choice of subject: light bulbs. Again, Rachel Wilder was not like other kids. She recalls telling her parents of her decision, “First they laughed for a while. Then they asked why. This didn’t upset me. I think that in some ways they expect me to do peculiar things by now, and they accept me all the same.”

The same year, after having visited her older sister Brooke at Belmont University multiple times in her high school career, she decided it was the place she wanted to be. She selected a Religion and the Arts major with a Spanish minor, so that she could combine 3 of her greatest passions. The only issue is that she is still deciding if one of them is art or writing. She does not know for sure what she would like to do later in life. “All I know is that I want to help people, especially children. I do not want this to be limited to children in the United States, so I’m trying to master my Spanish, another love of mine.” Rachel does have one specific goal for the future though; “One day… One day my artwork will hang on the sacred walls of Bongo Java.”

Think Of The Guppies!

Not to ruin "The Little Mermaid" for everyone or anything, but the whole plot points to one major flaw-- the oceanic school systems. Clearly the school systems have failed Ariel and her fishy friends. The whole conflict of the movie rests in her not knowing how to write. Think it over... She obviously can't tell Prince Eric outright that she needs a little smooch-a-roo to spare her from an eternity of enslavement to Ursula. She can't even SPEAK. Things would be a whoooole lot simpler if she had learned how to write. It's really not that unobtainable of a goal, now is it? NASA even so generously invented those pens that write under water, yet the stupid schools of fish aren't putting them to use in the classrooms. Many a young fish has been pointing his fin at his fellow decadent pupils-- prawny and gilly alike. Some blame the government (a.k.a. King Trident) or the school board. Other youthful fish have given up on school work altogether to pursue the party scene: visiting the local wet bars and sand bars, getting clam-baked till the tides change, and just plain sea-horsing around. Some fish choose to ignore this problem. But I say a storm of stupidity is a comin', so ye best hoist ye sails. And yes, I do mean YOU. If honest fish and people sniff hard enough, they'll naturally smell a rat... but most likely fish because they, by nature, are stanky. But you may ask, "Wait, do fish even have noses?".... (Oh, hey, Tangent!)

Yes. They do. Aaand HOW! Remember sharks, people. Remember sharks. This might sound sharking, but they can detect one drop of blood with as much as 94 liters of water present. Since fish don't technically breathe through their nostrils like we do, theirs are used solely for scent. I sound like I know this stuff naturally, right? Thanks. Actually I used info from a kids' educational website. Conclusion: even these big, bad boys o' the sea are not matriculating as much as they used to.

That was a dangerously long tangent, so I'll get back to the point. Something fishy is going on, and not just in the market down the street. The million dollar question is... to whom does the blame belong?!

To NASA of course! Obviously fish aren't as dextrous as humans. How can they be expected to HOLD a pen when they do not have fingers? AND all of this is expected to be possible under slippery, non-viscous water?! Get REAL.

I'm so tired of moms calling fish "brain food" when clearly they are illiterate fiends that will make us dumber simply by our eating them. We can't ignore this problem. We need to fix it.

If you're going to litter the ocean be sure to dump something that will help educate a carp or edify a tuna. Laptops. Novels you pretended to read in high school like The Old Man And The Sea. NASA's underwater pens WITH an underwater adhesive, so the fish can get a good grip while writing (No matter if it is permanent; better a literate fish that can't swim due to balance issues than one that can swim contentedly, full of ignorant bliss and a swim bladder.). You get the idea.

Up here on the land we say, "Think of the children!" Today, I urge you, "Think of the guppies!"