A Step Up

I'm at Disney World for a few days at the National Council of Teachers of English conference where I'll be part of an awesome presentation on Writers Week...you should stop by if you're in the neighborhood! Aside from that, I'm checking out numerous other sessions centered around literacy, hobnobbing with fellow English teachers, and hopefully picking up some free books and author autographs. Tonight I listened to Lois Duncan speak and got an autographed copy of I Know What You Did Last Summer, one of my favorite novels in middle school. It was awesome!

Also awesome was the Writer's Workshop session presented by Penny Kittle and Tom Romano. It was an amazing hour-and-forty-five minutes of writing and discussion. Here's one of my quick writes from the session in which we had to choose a quote, phrase or line for inspiration:

"Just because it's on the floor, it doesn't mean you step on it!"

Really?!? That's going to be one of my parenting tag lines? That's one of the things Mini-Me, The Wubster, and SheWhosNotActuallyGuiltyOfThisYet will remember about me?

I've lost count of how many times the phrase has poured from my lips, but, during a recent bedtime firestorm, it sank in that it's too many when Rach said it, too.

I just can't fathom the complexities of childhood vision that cause me to utter this phrase so much. Is it that the boys' noses are too big? Are their eyes too close together? Maybe their bottom eyelids are stuck? Could it be that their limited height changes the dynamics of vision and interrupts the angles at which light bounces from the floor, creating an ocular Bermuda Triangle.

I don't step on stuff. I watch where I walk. It's easy for me (when the lights are on) but, then again, I'm not four. Or two. Or six months.

I don't find joy in the tactile sensations of separating myself from that boring old carpet. Oh, how a Casio keyboard underfoot must feel! Or the complete works of Dr. Seuss, the remote control, daddy's laptop (which he should've known not to leave on the floor)!

Any time we move a piece of furniture, one of the cats immediately notices and spends hours examining the house from her new perch. The kids must have the same 'nose' for change. They hunt out misplaced objects and stand on them, except they don't seem to realize they're doing it. It's just an innate challenge of gravity, breaking free of the norm, gaining of new perspectives.

It's certainly not finished or polished, but it's a start.