doudsville

love the death grip....and the double chin.

once a year, at mormon church, all the kids ages three to twelve (i think twelve is the cutoff.... i could be wrong) work together to basically do a little program during normal church time.  well, i guess the program's not "little".  it's like 45 minutes long, somewhere around 50 kids (totally guestimating) sing songs, and each child has an individual speaking part.  yes EACH child puts his or her little beak up to a microphone and recites their part to the 300 or so people in the audience.  as an aside, i probably would have considered doing my hair this morning before church had i known the children's program brings out the grandparents and other visitors in full force.

and i've neglected to mention, i'm a teacher to the three and four year olds, so i had to put my own little beak up to the microphone today at one point; something frankly, i was dreading since i get gland defyingly sweaty when more than two eyes at a time are on me while i'm making sentences exit my mouth.

 a few thoughts inspired by the children's program:

kids LOVE to volunteer.  this is so bizarre to me.  if you ask for a volunteer in a group of adults, you get a bunch of averted eyes and shuffling feet until some benevolent individual takes pity on the rest of us and raises his hand so we can all exhale.  not so with the kiddies.  the kids love the attention, and they love to feel special, and they love to please you,  and there is such a thin barrier between their desires and their actions.  i'm sure this is common knowledge to most of you guys, but i was always more into dogs than kids...so i'm still learning. and it makes me jealous sometimes.  because what happens to us all when we get old?  and let's not kid ourselves, we ARE old.  do we really dislike the attention so much?  or do we feel the need to pretend we dislike the attention?  why?  basically, i had a holden caufield moment this morning, where i just wanted to stand at the edge of the rye  field and keep the kids from jumping away from their innocence.  when does that happen?  and how do i KEEP it from happening?  and do i even WANT to keep it from happening??  i'll have to put more thought into it later.  it's time for our nightly episode of arrested development, and captain impatient pants greg is waiting.....