I’m teaching sixteen seven-year-olds this week and I am exhausted. Seven-year-old boys never stop talking. Ever. And every idea, every story goes on and on and on. And just when you think its finished - because they have stopped actively making words and are just breathing and uttering noises and looking off in the distance and twisting their fingers in their shorts or playing with their stupid shoelace that is never tied- and you start to say something, they’ll jump right back in with a wounded “But I’m not done.” And you’re stuck in the story loop about how your pirate story is like the bad guy in mine craft or Pokémon or something for another five minutes. When I get home, I sit in a mini coma in the corner of the couch just shaking and trying to get all the extra words my brain has acquired over the day out of my head.
On Monday, in the midst of group games with my sixteen seven-year-olds, sixteen “I’m almost eight!” year olds and “I used to be four but now I’m five.” year olds, I spotted a crying five year old sitting against the wall. Concerned, I slid myself down the wall, sat next to him and asked him what was wrong. Head down, lips in full pout, tears streaming down his face, and he told me he wanted his mommy. I reassured him he would see her soon and that we only had a few more minutes to play. “Are you tired?” I asked him. He turned to me, nodded his head, his big wet blue eyes over flowing and told me earnestly and totally overwhelmed, “It’s just too much. It’s just too much.” I hear you little one. I’m off to write pirate clues for sixteen seven-year-olds for a play they are performing on Friday that I have yet to write that will probably have an evil mine craft character in it that maybe is on a boat but maybe was really a good guy that turned bad when his cop friend found the treasure in the boat took it from him and and and maybe that made him into a bad guy who was really evil but then maybe he found a special potion that made him turn into a dragon and that dragon was like a fire breathing dragon and then and then and then…. Sometimes it is just too much.
2 Comments
Q.D
6/24/2015 05:09:33 pm
I love kids, i find the long involved stories don't end just because they get older, just occasionally we get halfway through a story with my Year 12's doing the telling and i have to jam my fingers in my ears and sing La La La audibly till they remember I am an adult who doesn't want to hear details that may lead to a mandatory disclosure.
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ej
6/25/2015 12:55:06 pm
Hysterical! That's like husband with me - "La La La" - or me with this blog!
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AuthorMy name is ej. I'm a girl. I say that because with the short hair and the short initials, folks aren't always sure. More brilliant insights to who I am in About me Archives
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