Chat Room
Kids just kill me. When I drop Linus off at daycare, I usually hang around for a few minutes, just to help him acclimate. But, it also helps me see how he starts to blend in with the other kids, and get some sense of what their days might be like.
He's in a room now with the other four year-olds. They are the Big Kids, at least as far as his school goes.
It's a Montessori school, so the classrooms are very open and have a wide variety of things to do. Since we've been working with Linus on states, he usually goes right to the maps. So this morning, I helped him get the big laminated world map out. We layed it out on the floor, and we started talking about some of the different countries. He has a teacher from Guatemala and a teacher from Kenya, so we talked about where those places are on the map.
It didn't take long for about five of the other kids to come over. I knew their names, but hadn't really spent much time with them. They immediately went nuts, asking a million questions all at once.
"What's this state?" (while pointing to Australia)
"What's this called?"
"Is this the Missippi River?" (while pointing to the Atlantic Ocean)
Then, one of the kids asked me my name. "My name is Doug. I'm Linus' dad."
Then it was all a contest to compete for my attention. A big boy named Max said "Doug, I need to talk to you." He sounded very serious. I said, "Sure, Max. What about?"
"Umm...Uh...Umm..."
It seems Max needed to talk to me, but he wasn't sure what he needed to talk to me about. All the other kids (except Linus) then said in near-unison "Doug, I need to talk to you!"
They were nearly hysterical now to speak with me, even though we had been speaking quietly before. Somehow, the fact that I placed myself on a first-name basis with these kids drove them into a conversational frenzy.
There were too many of them, all at once. I was getting ready to excuse myself when a little girl named Kenyatta pulled my arm and said "Doug, can we chat?"
And that just killed me. "Can we chat?" Of course we can chat, Kenyatta.
"What should we chat about, Kenyatta?"
She stood, legs crossed, pulling her fingers while she looked at the floor. "Umm...I live in Minnesota!"
And all the kids, Linus included, just exploded as one as they ran to my sides: "I LIVE IN MINNESOTA, TOO!"
I bid them farewell after I assured them that I too lived in Minnesota. A part of me wanted to stay there with those kids, to roll around on the carpet and play with puppets and point at places on the map and go for a walk out in their neighborhood and scream and eat goldfish crackers.
A big part of me.
10:15:14 AM 
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