I continued working with the kids on their Word Sorts today, and although most of the day was mundane, there were a few amusing instances worth recounting. The kids cycle through sorting their words pretty quickly, but one boy stayed with me sorting words for quite some time. His name is Nick, and if you imagine a miniature version of Mr. Incredible minus the costume from the Disney Pixar animated film, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Nick looks like. He’s taller than half the kids in class, and has a heavy build and rudy cheeks. His brow is often furrowed in concentration, when other kids are ignoring their work, and he dutifully follows all of Ms. Visala’s instructions.
Nick sorted the words quickly enough, and then began to read each word to me and grant me a long, drawn-out explanation of what each word meant. In between words he told me little tidbits about his life- he used to live in Texas, he loves watching the old Scooby Doo cartoons with his dad. His stories were amusing, and his astonishment that I had never seen the cartoon where Scooby Doo meets Batman was a laugh-out-loud occasion. He told jokes, and spoke in such a grown-up manner that just about everything he said was funny. If you put him in a suit you could pass him off as a little person and no one would know the difference.
Two of the words today were “dead” and “death”, and I was interested to hear his explanations of them. He passed over “dead” pretty quickly, but when we hit “death” he rubbed his chin like he had a beard to rub for a few seconds. Then he looked straight into my eyes and said, “Well who do you think puts you up there?” He pointed at the ceiling. “Or down there?” He pointed at the floor.
I wasn’t sure what he meant, so I asked him just that, and repeated what he’d said, still pointing, and looked at me expectantly. “Well who do you think?” He asked again? It dawned on me that he was talking about Death, as in the Grim Reaper.
“You mean the Grim Reaper?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but he always wears a long coat, and he either puts you up there (points up) or down there (points down).”
He seemed so serious, but the matter-of-fact way he said “Well who do you think” just cracked me up. He smiled too.
“I try to be funny,” he said, “for the adults.” He was completely serious. “We kids have too much fun, you know, but you adults don’t. You know, it’s-“ and he mimed stacking papers and looking serious. “That’s it.”
This kid was just too much. I tried to contain my laughter, and thanked him for being so funny, because it certainly was working, and I certainly was having fun.
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