Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Children's Hour

Well, it's official. I can study my butt off for hours, or I can study hardly at all, and either way I get a B on my exams.

Whatever. I'm very anxious to move on to next semester and salve my GPA and my ego, both of which are slightly bruised at the moment, with more A's. I'm also working on a presentation that I'd like to give at an honors conference coming up in the spring on subject-specific learning disabilities (gee, can't imagine where I got THAT topic, can you?).

S has rehearsals every night this week, because opening night is on Friday. He's tired and nervous, and wants to take a hiatus from theatre for a couple of months before trying out for another production. That's fine with me. For one thing, I could use a break too, and for another, there aren't any auditions coming up in the next while anyway.

I had lunch with him today, along with one of the scouts in his den. I was pretty glad that he picked this particular boy to have lunch with us. M is absolutely freaking adorable, smart, witty, utterly charming, and just all-around squishable. Truth be told, he's probably my favorite in the entire pack besides S, and I'd eat lunch with this kid every week if I could.

Lunch is fun at S's school, especially lately. The kids seem to like me, probably in large part because I'm approximately their height and act roughly their age. And there are always two or three little girls who come up and talk to me about whatever shoes I happen to be wearing. Not sure what it is about the shoes, but it's always different little girls, so there's something going on with that. Today it was a pair of silver mary janes that I got at Payless last week. Last week it was hot pink satin stilettos.

Yeah, ok...I guess I can see the little-girl appeal!

There's another little boy in S's class whom I really like. H is autistic, and very very sweet. The other children are very kind to and protective of him, which gives me warm fuzzies all by itself. He's a random hugger, and comes out with things like "fireworks are funny!" While laughing hysterically. This was last week, while we were walking down the hall to the classroom with no fireworks in sight, but if you think about it, he's right. Fireworks are a pretty strange concept. He's as engaging as M is, although in an entirely different way. H makes me think.

For some reason right now, I'm really enjoying the company of children. I've never been one to want more than small doses of them at a time unless they were my son, sisters or cousins (and that's had its limits, too!), but that seems to be shifting. Not that I'm considering taking up a career teaching or anything, but lately kids sure are fun to talk to! Wonder what that's about.

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