Second Chances

This is an update to the April 23 post titled "Questions" - http://isfulloflife.blogspot.com/2013/04/questions.html

UPDATE – May 31, 2013 – Five Weeks Later

Five weeks ago you may have read about a mystery in our house.  We had suspicions that something fishy was going on in with our carp.  We had three separate but consecutive deaths in our aquarium with only one witness, and he wasn’t talking.  We obviously had questions about his role in the mishaps but could find no proof.

With only circumstantial evidence, we could not convict our goldfish, Gary, to life in prison for murder.  (My daughter changed her mind about his gender – once again we think he really is a Gary.)  Since we couldn’t declare his innocence either, we agreed upon a sort of probation.  We would give him a few weeks of solitary confinement to work through any problems he may have had.  Who knows what might have pushed him over the edge; anger management issues, a traumatic fry-hood, frustration over gender confusion?  Whatever it was we hoped that time for reflection would solve the problem.

After a month of confinement he had earned our confidence with his mellow behavior. Once again we ventured down to the Feed & Seed to find a hearty companion for Gary.  Selecting this carp was no easy task.  Most of the goldfish tanks were filled with smallish, frail looking fish that could not defend themselves against a large and menacing goggle-eyed fantail.  At last we found a tank with larger egg-shaped fish that looked seasoned enough to share an aquarium with our rough-and-tumble bully (at five times the price, of course).

We brought it home and floated the large plastic bag in Gary’s tank so they could acquaint themselves from behind the barrier.  So far, so good.  After a few minutes we let the new white fish with the bright red bulge on its head explore the tank and meet Gary.  This carp was slightly larger than Gary so we were confident.

For the first day Gary chased and goosed the new fish, but it didn’t seem to mind.  That’s when Ella decided that Gary-etta was acting like an alpha-male and we could call him Gary again.  She also insisted that we not name the new fish until we could observe personality and gender characteristics…we didn’t want to make a mistake.

After a week this is what I know:  They are both aggressive eaters, which is good.  Aside from Ella’s initial reports that Gary was shoving the new fish against the filter tube, they appear to have settled down and are coexisting just fine.  I don’t know if Gary is cured of his violent tendencies, or if he is too busy belly-laughing at the new fish’s hideous “hat” to make trouble?

 

Although Ella hasn’t given final word on the gender of this new pet and therefore has not named IT, I’m beginning to think it’s a bad-ass SHE by the way she is unwilling to flatter Gary by allowing him alpha status.  She deserves a strong and beautiful name.

In conclusion, it appears that felonious goldfish can, indeed, be rehabilitated and returned to society.  We cannot yet determine whether Gary will be a productive member of this society, but we have faith in his goodness.

Fish may be larger or smaller than they appear.  Do you know how hard it is to get two goldfish to pose for the camera at the same time?

The Dark Side of Dog People

I would say that a great many of us put ourselves in one of two categories:  Dog People and Cat People.  For those of you who have lived under a rock and may not be familiar with the terms, a dog person is a human who prefers the company of dogs, and likewise for cat people.  Keep in mind that there is a whole third category that I’m not discussing, called The Crazy Cat Lady, which is in a class by itself (and unfortunately my teenage daughter secretly aspires to be one someday).

In my experience, when cat people declare themselves as a Cat Person in a conversation, they are merely stating a fact.  When dog people make the claim for their preference, however, listen carefully to the tone.  There is a definite attitude to the statement.  They say, “Well, I’m a Dog Person,” in such a way to establish their superiority.  I’m not complaining because I have probably been guilty of such an attitude myself.  Although I consider myself an Animal Person, if I had to choose between cats and dogs I would likely side with the running-barking-chewing variety.

A dog person sees the traits of loyalty, playfulness, unconditional love and devotion to humans as dog traits and superior to the cat traits of independence, a refined sense of taste and definite preferences for certain things and certain humans.

I think the superiority complex that dog people possess comes from a false assumption:  That dog people are like dogs, and cat people are like cats.  The person who prefers canines believes that they, themselves, share these superior traits with their beloved pooches and that’s what makes them Dog People, and they are therefore superior to cat people.

Dog people see themselves as Happy-Go-Lucky, just like their best friends.  There may be a small bit of truth to that, but I believe the most opinionated of these dog people like to exploit those traits that make dogs so wonderful, in fact they depend upon them.  Bear with me.

Could it really be that a dog person is actually quite insecure and feels extra needy for the unconditional love that the canine brings?  Perhaps they really need someone in their life who will follow their every order and chase the ball when thrown, sit when told to sit and beg for treats and affection.  They need that dog to follow them around so they feel important, and to wait by the front door for eight hours a day with only their human master on their mind.

            It is the cat person that is comfortable with him or herself, and is okay with a companion that comes for affection only when they really feel like sharing the love.  They appreciate the honesty when a fickle cat rejects a food they previously loved, a toy that has too much spit on it, or a scratch on the head that was too rough.  If the human is too loud or its lap is too rough or scratchy, the cat will find a more suitable place to sleep.  The cat person doesn’t need the constant attention and devotion that the dog person needs.

The dog person expects the dog to love everything about them, no matter how unlikable.  What dog people really don’t like about cats, is that you have to work for their affection.  The devotion of a cat is never guaranteed.

Think about how you choose a partner in life.  You don’t necessarily look for someone exactly like you, but someone who compliments you.  Can you imagine if we picked our spouses in the same manner that we select our pet species?  Do you really want to spend your life with someone who wants to boss, control, put you on a leash and expects you to beg for good things?  Or do you want someone who respects your independence, who enjoys your company while you’re there, earns your affection but also respects your need to be an individual?

Obviously I’m having a little fun here - just stirring the pot, so to speak.  But I do have these thoughts when I see the macho guy yanking on his dog’s leash and yelling at him to HEEL!!  (My ill-behaved labrador doesn’t know the meaning of the word.)  I can’t help but wonder, does he treat his family the same way? 

Girls are often told to pay attention to the way their boyfriends treat their own mothers to get an idea of how the boys will likely to treat their future wives.  I say you might learn more from finding out what pet he/she prefers and watching the way your mate treats his/her pets.

DINOSAUR

That’s me.  I’ve been in denial.  All this time I have convinced myself that I believe that the Old Way is better, and therefore do not need to embrace the new technology.  “Sure,” I say, “I get it:  Constant-no-break-always-in-touch-communication is the way of the future, but I’m NOT buying it.”  We did JUST FINE without calling from the grocery store to check with home if we need anything.  We were OKAY when stuck in traffic and delayed by an hour or so without calling.   Nobody would worry.  Because that is the way it WAS.

I laughed, very hard, when my First Grade Teacher friend told me about the first time she had Free Choice in her class and kids chose to play on the computer.  When Nick wanted to interact with the big old computer monitor, instead of using the OLD SCHOOL mouse, he pressed his finger against the screen and tried to wipe away the unwanted icon and bring the more desirable game with a swipe of the hand….NOT!  This is under-funded public school.  Touch screen computers exist in the real world, but they are not reality for the average classroom yet.

Today I was in a Third Grade class when a student needed to call home.   I informed him that he could use the wired classroom phone, but he had to dial 9 before his home number to get through.  After the call I saw him staring at the receiver, quizzically looking back to me for help. 

“Did you get through?” I asked.

“Yeah, my parents are coming,” was the response.  But his face was still confused and he was turning the phone receiver, attached to a strange coiled cord, around in all directions to get a better view.

“Are you okay?” I inquired.

“Yep.  Everything is fine,” he responded, “I just don’t know how to turn this thing off!”

I actually had to assure him that if he put that antique phone into its base that it would shut itself off, or “hang up”, as we Dinosaurs like to say.

We can pretend to be simply resisting the latest technology as a fad, but I must admit that the new developments are leaving me far, far behind.

We have all been through this.  “Yep,” says Grampa, “I used to walk ten miles through snow and ice to get to school.  You kids have it too easy!”  He spouts his values as superior to ours, like we do to our own kids.  Or is it denial?  Denial of new and better (and easier) things to come?  Are school buses really evil?  Carpools…were they the end of civilization?

Touch pads, smart phones…are they the path to the demise of human civilization?  Or are they just the future? 

Don’t ask this Dinosaur.

Simple Pleasures - Part Two

(see previous post for Part One)

The simple pleasures have always been on my mind as I raised my own children.   When small, their little brains were like empty cookie jars just waiting to be filled with snickerdoodles, peanut butter sandies and chocolate chip cookies.  So curious, they were in awe about everything.  Many hours were spent exploring the natural world as well as museums.  There were things to wonder about all around us and sights to be seen around every corner.  We lived abroad for a time and our oldest daughter, then a toddler, could spot a Chinese temple from a block away, simply by smell. 

By age 5, we would walk to the neighborhood school every day and would stop to save earthworms along the way.  They never missed an ant colony, birds’ nest or snail crossing.  My daughters knew where to find the best berries on the walk home, and in the fall which trees had the apples with the perfect balance of sweet and sour.  One day my youngest, a first grader at the time, declared, “I will never again eat an apple that I didn’t pick fresh off of a tree myself!”  What a wonderful world that would be if we could live that way forever, but due to reality she has eaten many a store-bought apple since.

 As each of my girls neared puberty the simple fun was harder to find and before long, it seemed, they needed gadgets and screens of various sizes to pass the time.  Sometimes I wonder where I went wrong along the way…could I have done more to foster their wonder and awe about the world?  At times I’m afraid that if I looked into their little cookie jar brains, I would find maybe a half-eaten cookie, some stale crumbs and a random chocolate chip.

This Sunday I was given a dose of hope in my daughters’ generation.  We had all agreed on a lazy day.  While I lounged on the deck, both teenage girls lingered in the kitchen doing homework and painting nails.  I could hear the soundtrack from Les Miserables wafting out the door.  When I ventured in for some tea I found the doorway to the kitchen barricaded with a tall pile of furniture.  When I inquired about what in the heck was going on, my eldest responded in a garble of French and they both pointed squirt guns at me.  “Vive la France!” I made out from the shouts of the third year French student.  The French Revolution had broken out in my very own home.

Thank goodness my daughters are not too cool yet to take joy in a simple pretend game!  And apparently we aren’t too cool either, because we allowed the barricade to stand for most of the day (with the requirement that we were allowed access to food and caffeine) until the dog demanded she enter the kitchen for dinner.  We all enjoyed a fun day and a have great memory to hold onto.

 

There is no reason to believe that the Simple Pleasures are only for the young.  There is no age limit on filling your belly with ripe berries on a walk.  Even when I’m a Grandmother I plan to explore and take joy in every little thing.   While walking down the sidewalk after a rainstorm, I will still notice the helpless earthworm writhing on the pavement, searching for a patch of soft earth to bore down to safety.  I’ll take a moment to bend over and scoop up the little critter and toss her into a flower bed where she can enrich the garden with her excrement.  And I will be happy.

Simple Pleasures

Just why are little kids so good at the important things in life?  And how do we lose sight of those things when life gets busy and complicated?  Pure joy comes to the young with the simplest of pleasures while we adults all too often trudge through the day without taking joy in much of anything.

Last Friday I had the pleasure of working with my favorite first grade class.  My day began with lending assistance to a little girl as she added “fresh” pond water she had brought from home to the tadpole habitat on the counter.  Of course all of the other students had to observe the little creatures before they themselves got settled in for the day.  Two little girls with the same name soon came skipping excitedly over to me to announce that they had named one of the tadpoles.  I was led by the hand over to the jar so they could introduce me to Chunky Monkey Funky (yes, in that order, for reasons I don’t understand), named so for his outstanding girth.

One of the best things about Friday in First Grade is you get to celebrate being awesome for a week by earning a Free Choice Time.  The young students live for these forty-five minutes of unstructured time.  Usually it means their choice of board games or creative time with all the tape, paper scraps, glue and markers they can use before time runs out.

One little fellow worked by himself on a top secret project.  With paper and markers and a huge grin, he bent over his desk, creating away.  After a few minutes he walked up to me with his head held high, shoulders thrown back and a bigger smile than ever.  He held out a gift.  “I made you a computer!” he said with pride.  It was beautiful.  I am now the proud owner of my very own laptop that even has my name on it (see below).

His beaming face was full of more jubilance than most adults feel in a week, I’m afraid.

The two girls with the same name appeared in front of me bouncing up and down.  “We want to write a book about the tadpole!!  It’s called Chunky Monkey Funky Goes to School!”  However, they were sad that we had run out of large construction paper for the cover.  I had some extra helpers in the room that day so I sent one of them with the two girls to the paper room. 

A few minutes later the two girls returned holding two bright blue sheets of 12 x 18 construction paper.  Their faces were about to split open with giant smiles.  They paraded around the room to show each one of their classmates, “Look at what we got!  We got to go to the PAPER ROOM!” as if they had found a pot of gold under a rainbow.  I heard one child respond, “I know, I got to go in there once.  It was SO fun!”

For one second, imagine being overjoyed by a trip to the supplies room in an elementary school.  Having this experience as the highlight of not only your day…but maybe your week, month or school year?

For the rest of the afternoon these two spent every spare minute working on their little story book.  And each time I looked over, I swear they were levitating above their desks with glee.  All it took was one tadpole and two pieces of fresh, perfect paper to bring absolute happiness to two little humans for at least a day.

Maybe we, as adults, can’t find pure bliss in something so regular, so simple.  As grown-ups, though, it is possible to find pleasure in simple things every day, but we may have to be more deliberate about it.  It could be as easy as listening to the birds sing while you indulge in your favorite steaming morning beverage.  Or you pause to focus on the movement from the corner of your eye and spy a tiny hummingbird sipping nectar from the flower basket.  We just have to choose to take time, each day, to seek out and enjoy the simple wonders, and pleasures, that surround us.

The Character Test

When you meet someone for the first time, what are you thinking?  Are you looking at their outer beauty (because you are in heat and looking for a mate)?  Are you judging their social standing based on trivial things like expensive shoes or jewelry?  Or are you listening for some commonality, maybe a sport or hobby you share? You leave the encounter with various feelings; curiosity to know more, relief that you’ve gotten away or possibly simple indifference.  We all do it, whether we like it or not, usually without thinking.

My brother Mike thought about it, and he identified a test to judge the worthiness of a person as a friend.  He swore that this “Character Test” was flawless and it involved his large, smelly dog, Nellie.  Sure, Nellie started out as a cuddly, harmless puppy and then quickly grew into an enthusiastic 85 pounds of powerful muscle and slobber.  Nellie and Mike were always together.  She even came to work with him, where she would rest patiently in his truck until lunch when they would walk together and play with his students.

The Character Test went like this:  When a person first encountered Nellie, their entire worthiness as a human being would be judged by how they reacted to Mike’s best friend.  If the person took a wide berth and scowled = fail.  A fake smile and a finger-tip pet on the head followed by a hand wipe against jeans = fail.  Eye-contact with canine and a genuine smile = pass.  Hand out for a sniff and compliment on dog’s attractiveness = A-/B+.  Stop, pet, 5 minute conversation about breed, dog parks and chew toys = A+!

Nellie, you must understand, was a beast.  Mike refused to take her through traditional obedience training because he believed it would break her jovial doggie spirit.  Nellie was tall enough to counter-surf so you never left food in the kitchen unattended.  One time I had her on leash when she saw a squirrel.  We both flew at high speed until I realized the only way to stop the chase was to run smack into a thick hedge.  It hurt.  She was enthusiastic about everything.  In other words, to meet Nellie with grace took A LOT of character.

When you think about it, this test makes quite a bit of sense.  It’s the same reason why politicians love to be seen kissing babies.  You can buy nice clothes and rehearse witty jokes, but compassion and empathy are more difficult to fake. 

You’re thinking: Judged by my reaction to an ill-behaved mutt…really?  But it made total sense, for Mike anyway.  He was a rough-and-tumble outdoorsman who would rather be climbing mountains or sailing on the bay than trimming hedges or painting trim.  If you took a liking to his dog, you were more likely to enjoy his company as well.  On the other hand, if you had an aversion to dog hair and mud, you were not very likely to feel comfortable in Mike’s messy home, riding in his old-yet-quaint VW micro-bus or stomping on the trails with him and his four-legged pal.

So, do you have a character test?  The next time you meet someone new, what will be going through your mind?  And the next time you make a new acquaintance, one who may have an impact on your future, or one that you simply would like to get to know better, you might want to pet their dog.

Ditch the Coffee...and the Cocktails. Yeah. Right.

 

I am not one to preach about habits.  I can say with reasonable confidence that I have more vices than the average human.  But I am going to impose my opinion on others, just this once.

Have you ever risen at first light, and instead of making a pot of coffee, just put on your shoes and gone out for a nature walk?  This is something I’m forced to do on a regular basis because I have a large four-legged beast that requires supervised exercise. If I don’t take her out for some serious exploration I end up with the sad-eyes, nose-poke guilt treatment all day. In her younger years my pup would simply come with me on my runs, but now at the sweet old age of 13 a morning walk is about right.

This “chore” has turned out to be better than coffee.  Not only does it clear the sleepy dreams from my brain, but I return home brimming with optimism about the day.  What can be more joyful than spying a family of deer, quietly munching the neighbor’s prize rose bush for breakfast?  Or having Woody the Woodpecker (in this case a majestic pileated with a ruby-red crown) dropping bark bits into your hair from the tree above?  Your ears become fine-tuned to the sounds of robins belting out their morning tunes and the deep croak of the bullfrog mating song.

The effect of the morning walk lasts longer than coffee, too.  Instead of the energy crash that hits a couple of hours after a caffeine jolt, you have a smile, more of a private joke between you and yourself, for the entire day.  You owned the morning. 

Why ditch the cocktails?  Yesterday was a busy day so we didn’t get out for our walk until dusk.  Rewarded for our procrastination, we enjoyed our own private Happy Hour on the forest trails.  My bouncing Labrador and I shared the magical moment of being silently swooped by a big brown barred owl who may have mistaken my pony-tail for a squirrel tail.  She was beautiful.  It was one of those big, deep sigh moments.  Much like the feeling of sitting back with a glass of wine after a satisfying day.

But tell you what.  I like caffeine as much as the next human.  And I love liquid Happy Hours, too.  So at the least we can all try this, just once:  Bring your coffee in a travel mug (or your glass of wine) right along with you and hit the trails.  The most important thing is to get out there and smile at all there is to see and hear. You might just find yourself addicted.

A Human Story about a Cat

I was reminded of two important things last night:

#1  The power of Kindness and Community even when it comes to helping the smallest pet member.

#2  What it’s like to be woken in the middle of the night by a purring cat chewing on my nose, and then listening to her play ricochet with a superball on the wood stairs – over and over and over again.

This all started a couple of days ago when our special little runt kitty, Lyra, went missing in the middle of the day.  She had minimal outdoor experience and we were letting her familiarize herself with our yard in preparation for summer.  This was not her very first time out so we were not overly concerned until she didn’t return when her tummy alarm rang “dinner!”

After two days of plastering the neighborhood with flyers adorned with her whiskery face, placing ads on craigslist and facebook, and trips to the Humane Society, we were feeling less and less hopeful that the scrubby little cat would return.  The sun was about to set for the third time since Lyra had gone on the lam.  Was she raccoon food?  Coyote bait?  Curled up in some Gramma’s lap getting fed fresh tuna?  With my voice hoarse from calling, “Kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty,” I knew if she didn’t come home that it wasn’t from lack of effort on our part.

Suddenly, with darkness descending, simultaneously the phone rang and our daughter shouted that she thought she heard something outside.  Our neighbor’s voice came through the phone as well as the “YOWL! YOWL! YOWL!” that Ella had heard. 

“Does this meow sound familiar?” Pia asked, almost with a giggle.  I slammed down the phone and we all ran two doors down to our neighbor’s driveway.  The frantic yowling was coming from up a tree.  So far up a tree that we couldn’t even see the noisemaker herself.  So far up a tree, my husband soon found out, that not only the branches but the trunk were too thin to support adult human weight.

The sound of the hysterical creature brought plenty of neighbors out and every wonderful one of them offered to help.  Three different ladders arrived from up and down the block.  Unfortunately none were tall enough.

I thought of all of those cartoons and picture books I read when I was a child that showed the fire department happily rescuing a scared kitten from a tree.  I actually called the fire department.  I asked, “I was just wondering if you guys ever rescue cats from trees, like in the cartoons?”

The dispatcher said, “Uh, I don’t think so,” but then I think she heard the constant, desperate cat-cries in the background and knew that this neighborhood was in distress.  She added, “Let me ask.  Can I call you back?”

I handed the phone to Makenna, a neighborhood girl, and took my turn up the ladder.  My husband had already come down, covered in cat urine and excrement.  It was clear that Lyra had been silently perched up there the whole time since she went missing.  Why had she waited until the third night to panic?  As the sky darkened, did she finally decide she didn’t want to stay one more night up there?  Why had she chosen this moment, when everyone was home, and thankfully not in the dead of night, in the pitch black?

The phone rang and the fire dispatcher said that Engine #4 was coming our way.  They must have had a slow night and were up for a ladder drill.  Or perhaps they had read the same picture books I had.

Moments later, Bill-the-thrill-seeking-maniac who never sees a problem he can’t fix (an engineer, of course), went to the next driveway and climbed the somewhat sturdier tree behind the first tree.  He was able to navigate through more urine and excrement and grab Lyra by the scruff of her neck.  The fire department was called and thanked, and Bill handed Lyra to me so I could bring her down the ladder.  She began purring as soon as the first child pet her.

We all celebrated!  It’s so funny, because everyone was aware that we were missing a cat and they felt sad for us.  But that kind of thing happens all the time and we would survive.  But last night, there was something about that sad desperation in a tiny being, that crying voice that broke everyone’s heart and suddenly people were willing to risk their skin to help her.  As I said to Bill as he climbed past me, “If you hurt yourself I’m gonna kill you!”

He answered, “Don’t worry, Sharece will too (his wife).”

Lyra may be a cute little cat, but people are amazing.

Potato - Tomato

“Potato – Potahto.   Tomato – Tomahto.   Let’s call the whole thing off!”  That’s what Louie Armstrong famously crooned years ago.  And so did little Joey on this particular morning in reading class.  He wanted to call the whole thing OFF.

You see, ‘Joey’ had been working on a Double-Bubble Map with his classmate, ‘Fred’, with the help of their reading teacher.  If you don’t know what a Double-Bubble is, imagine an old-fashioned Venn Diagram in which you are comparing two different ideas. The commonalities are written in the center where the circles over-lap and the differences are put in the outer circles.  Except this kind has a whole bunch of bubbles.

On the previous day Joey and Fred had started a D.B. Map about their own personal likes and dislikes.  They were reviewing the things they had written.  Joey had put the color green on his side, and Fred had blue on his.  Many of the items were food and games, regular kid stuff.

Suddenly an argument erupted.  “We need to move tomatoes out of the common bubble!” Joey insisted.  Fred strongly disagreed.  Mrs. K, their reading teacher came over to help settle the dispute.  Joey was adamant that they move tomatoes out and into their own, separate bubbles.

“Do you like tomatoes, Joey?” she asked.  He nodded.  “Do you like tomatoes, Fred?” she inquired of the other boy.  He also nodded in agreement. “If you both like tomatoes, then it belongs in the common bubble, right?”

Getting more agitated, Joey raised his voice, “But, you don’t understand.  We like different KINDS of tomatoes!”

A little confused, Mrs. K asked, “Well, if they’re both tomatoes, isn’t that okay?”

“NO!” Joey insisted.  “Fred likes the RED kind of tomatoes, and I like the GREY kind of tomatoes!”

“What kinds of tomatoes are grey?” the teacher wondered.

In an exasperated voice he answered, “The GREY tomatoes that they make French fries out of!”

“Oh.  Okay.  Let me clarify something for you,” she began.

Argument settled, mystery solved.  Words can be pretty tricky when you’re seven years old.  As a teacher, it’s times like this that make working with little people so worthwhile.

The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense seems to come so easily to children.  But as we grow into adulthood, so many adults seem to lose touch with this last and ever-so-important sense.  What a shame.

Your first thought might be, E.S.P (extra sensory perception)?  Though kids love to fantasize about reading minds, but that is not the sixth sense I am referring to.  Nor am I talking about Equilibrioception (sense of balance) and proprioception (sense of body position),  the commonly accepted physiological senses that some like to lump with the original 5 senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell.

No, this Sixth Sense is way more powerful and is vital to human existence.  Without it we might not be human at all.  Let me illustrate this sixth sense through a classroom story that a friend shared with me.

As in most first grade classrooms, Ms. M and her children have a regular morning routine.  They sing a song, update the calendar, count the days they’ve been in school, etc.  One routine they had been struggling with lately was the weather prediction. 

Each morning a new child is chosen to predict the weather for the day and place the corresponding picture card in a pocket on the calendar.  Things had been getting silly and kids were saying, for example, “sunny” when the wind was whipping through the trees and the windows were pelted with angry rain drops.  If the morning was bright and sunny, the chosen student meteorologist of the day might choose the “foggy” picture to place on the calendar.

Although this may have been funny and cute the first few times, Ms. M was becoming annoyed and decided to start this particular day with a lesson on the five senses.  “People who predict the weather for the news don’t just make wild guesses,” she told the 6 and 7 year-olds.  “That wouldn’t work very well,” she added.  “You may not have the tools that real meteorologists have, but you can use your senses as tools.”  Ms. M continued to explain that the children can open the door to feel the temperature.  They can look at the trees to see if the branches are swaying with the wind.  “Sometimes you can even smell the rain!” she exclaimed.

Ms. M definitely had their attention and felt like she had made the point she wanted to.  ‘Jane’ was then chosen as this morning’s weather-girl and the class waited quietly for her prediction.  Jane, a bright and helpful child, walked over to the door and opened it.  Silently she looked all around, held out her arms to feel for cold or rain and paused thoughtfully.  Yay, Ms. M thought, she was using her senses – the lesson was a success!  On this mild and damp gray morning, Jane turned around and announced to the class, “It’s SNOWING!”  Of course the class erupted into cheers.

“Wait.  Wait a minute,” Ms. M struggled to regain the kids’ attention.  “But Jane, it’s obviously NOT snowing.  I thought you were going to use your senses to predict the weather!”

“But I DID use my senses.  I used my sense of HUMOR!”  she giggled.

Ms. M was duped, but found her sixth sense and laughed out loud with the class.  And she was still giggling about it when she shared this story with me.

I often hear kids playing the “what if” game and debating which would be the worst of the five senses to lose.  “If you were blind, you couldn’t play X-Box!” or an adolescent girl might say, “I would just die if I could never hear Justin Bieber’s voice again!”  Personally, I’m not sure how well I would do if I lost one of those five physiological senses, but I am certain I wouldn’t be very happy without my sixth sense.  Just imagine a life without humor.

First Impressions

 

 

“Darlin’, your hair is a rat’s nest today,” and this time I meant it literally.  My daughter has a big mop of thick brown hair that her pet rats, Constance and Zoe, love to nest in.  Now WAIT a minute.  At the mention of rats you might have gotten the shivers and were tempted to stop reading.  First impressions aren’t’ always what they seem, so please read on.

     Admit it, you are picturing nasty, brown sewer rats that invade your basement, shred your insulation and spread diseases.  Put that picture in your pocket right now and clear your mind.

Constance and Zoe were born at the local Feed & Seed.  Full grown, they barely cover my daughter’s petite hand.  They are mostly a pristine white with elegant hoods of light grey and dark grey.  These girls are friendly, loyal and love to snuggle.  They are members of our family.

Domestic rats get a bad rap for sure, and their wild cousins are probably to blame.  But if you research rats you might be surprised.  They are quite smart and very clean.  Our rodent-girls have designated one small corner of their multi-leveled home as their bathroom.  Every time my daughter cleans their cage, they clear the soft litter from the corner that is as far from their sleeping quarters and food supply as possible, and use it exclusively for their “business”.  My daughter will carry them around the house in her sweater and they can “hold it” for a couple of hours.  As soon as she opens their cage door, they run from her hands to the corner to relieve themselves and then run back for some more snuggle time.

Pet rats are much more social than the hyper-active gerbils and the skitter-ish hamsters.  They come when called and can learn many tricks!  Their loyalty is clear, as they prefer my daughter to anyone else in the house (much to my chagrin – I love these little balls of fur).

 

Hopefully after reading this you have a better impression of pet rats (and the hair on your neck no longer stands on end at the thought).  Now think about other first impressions.  How many times have you based your opinion on somebody (human) on a first impression that turned out to be completely wrong?  Maybe the guy you had written off as an arrogant jerk turned out to be actually quite kind and fun to be around?  Or the person who you couldn’t wait to get to know better turned out to be a narcissistic bore.

I think we could all learn to be less judgmental upon first impressions and give people (and rats) a chance to shine.  We may be surprised at what we learn!

(PS – If I had put the picture of Ella’s cute rats in her hair at the beginning of this instead of the Mickey Mouse picture, would you have read this far?  Feel free to disagree...but I think I have a point!)