Target Audience

A colleague brought her fifth grade daughter to school for our teacher work day this morning. (That's right-- after six snow days in a row, we had our previously scheduled grade preparation day today. Don't be a hater.)

I have known this little girl all her life, but today we had a more wonderful time than usual, chatting at lunch about books, and the blizzard, and her classmates who would be coming to our school next year.

We had just finished a hilarious round of I'm going on a picnic when her mom finally stood up. "C'mon," she said. "I have work to do next door."

"But I want to stay here!" her daughter replied.

"Oh don't worry!" I laughed, "we can spend lots of time together next year!"

Hmmm.

I guess I did miss those kids after all.

Thank goodness they'll be back tomorrow.

Picnic Boss

Richard and Annabelle are here for their summer visit and among many other delights, that means playing I'm going on a picnic... whenever we are riding around in the car.

For those who are not familiar, the game goes like this: I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to bring [fill in the blank]. What are YOU going to bring? The object is to have some pattern in mind, so that whenever it's your turn, you give an example of an item that fits your pattern, and the other players have to figure it out by trial and error.

So, if my pattern was alphabetical order, I would say, I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing apples. What are you going to bring? If the next person said balloons, or anything else that started with a B, then I would benevolently reply, You can come.

But, when they guess something outside your pattern, You can't come! is the answer. The audacious rudeness of that reply makes me giggle to this day, as does the shock on the face of anyone who hears it for the first time. Their eyes widen in disbelief and quite often they say, as Annabelle did when I taught her and Richard the game last summer, "That is not nice!"

But now, we're old hands at it, and we picked it up this morning almost as if we'd never had a 52 week hiatus. Heidi started with an easy B pattern, and 6-year-old Annabelle followed with the classic A-B-C pattern. When it got to my turn, I couldn't resist messing with her. "I'm going on a picnic, and I'm going to bring dog poop!" I laughed wickedly, waiting for her to let me come along with my unsavory contribution.

She didn't hesitate. "I'm going to cut that off," she told me with authority.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise, and I looked at her in the rear view mirror.

"You can bring a dog," she said. That's it."