Back to School Buzz

I went to Target today. I was meandering my way up and down the isles hoping that I would see some kind of gadget or gizmo that would make my teaching this year just amazing. I like to take my time and look around, especially when I am on my own and have no time schedule. However, I had to stifle a smile every now and again as I passed certain people. The first family had a dad, a mom, a two year old, and a k-5 aged kid. The mom was looking at the price tags, the dad was getting flustered and the kid was by this time so over the back to school shopping that he was not even paying attention. Next you had the mom whose kid is in high school and is therefore way too cool to come school shopping with his mom. So, because of this the mom was on the cell phone the entire time asking the kid a million questions which probably would not have had to be asked had the kid deigned to show up at the store. "Are you in Spanish this year?" "What color are you supposed to have?" Then, to herself, "I do not even know what that thing on the list is." I scooted into another isle and smiled to myself. I found myself thankful, once again, that I am not the parent of a high school student. I love my high school students that I teach, but I am even more thankful that at the end of the day, my students go home to another person's house.

Giggles

I was listening to the old i-pod today while I did a little housework and my playlist went to the classical tunes. It began to play the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky. This brought back such a happy memory for me that I had to smile while the dishes were being washed (which if you know anything about me, doing dishes almost never evokes a smile on my face). I remembered a time way back when we lived in Wyoming and we had the big house with the HUGE basement. My little sister and I fell in love with the Nutcracker ballet and we tried to reenact it. So, for several weeks at a time we would put the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy song on and we would create our own choreographed ballet dance to the song. Of course, because I was bigger and older I had to be the big prince who was stomping through the forest and I would happen upon a beautiful princess (Rachel). Then, I would have to be very careful and hide behind rocks (couch), trees (the entertainment center) and so forth. Then, when the music reached a crescendo, the princess would spot me and I would then have to lift her up and then we would do the whole ballet thing together. Now, we made up the whole story line behind the song, having forgotten the time we actually saw that ballet live, so I am sure that the story line we developed was pretty far from what the composer originally intended. However, we had a ball and probably got some good exercise from it as well.

Now, not all of our pastimes were quite as intellectual. Being the all-American girls that we were, we had our fair share of Barbies. If you asked my parents, we had far more than our fair share of Barbies. We had rubbermaid tubs filled with all manner of Barbies. We had Dentist Barbie, real-hair Ken (whose hair always looked as though he had stuck his head in a toaster), bike-riding Barbie (who we later had to pretend was quadriplegic Barbie because her joints got so loose from riding bike too much that she no longer could stand) and even doctor Barbie (who, coincidentally never left her work at the office because her stethoscope was attached to her chest and could not be removed). However, we were quite imaginative with our play with Barbies as well. We would stage Barbie Christmas plays, Barbie re-enactments of the Brady Bunch (which included a rather bad haircut given to one barbie to give her "Alice the Housekeeper" hair). When a Barbie was unfortunate enough to not get put away at night, she would face the perils of the dog. This was the end of many a Barbie. However, we were able to save some. In order to explain the strange markings from the dog on the Barbie, we decided that they were "shark attack survivor" Barbies.

What's my point? As I smiled over the memories my sister and I had together I began to feel sad for the kids living now. What will their memories be? Many times I have hung out with a young kid and tried to engage them in "pretend" and they do not know how. If it is not electronic, computerized, or 3-D...they do not have a clue. It makes me sad. I know one thing for sure. If the Lord someday in the future gives Ryan and I a family of kids, they will be allowed to cultivate an imagination. I want them to someday when they grow up to hear a song and no matter what they are doing...a smile will break across their face and they can say "Thank you God for such a happy memory"