Halfway with Halfpint

I think Laura Ingalls Wilder gave up by By the Shores of Silver Lake. Somehow I'm reading to my 7 year old with the wiggly tooth, all about life next to a bunch of shanties with railroad men. Between On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake, the dog dies, Mary goes blind and Pa the failure has to move the family again because grasshoppers ate all his crops. But this time, he says, vamping, this time we'll find a GREAT homestead!

So far, I'm not enjoying reading how Laura has to tell Mary everything that's going on because she's blind and they went from living in this rural place where they got to walk to school in bare feet to this flat prairie land where there are "rough" men and way too much use of the word shanty. It's By the Shores of Grimy Railroad Men. It's kind of turned from Technicolor into black and white stark starving Irish family who is burning all their furniture for heat because Pa drank his paycheck again. I'm reading it with a perky voice, hoping it will get better, because Bess is listening to everything I say and mostly Laura has lost her beauty to the Industrial Age. But we're only halfway through.

Halfway with Halfpint.

I think I still look forward to reading each night to erase any recent subbing from my memory. It's my own Industrial Age, the grime of the Iron Giant messing with the rustic farm life where I was skipping along barefoot, only a few doors down. The last class I had was my first time with 5th grade, and these kids are wildly different in their ability to get to work. There are some really nice, hardworking ones, and there was the one who just wanted to eat candy the whole time, lots of different colors of kids too, and some awesome hair - one kid's hair had actual texture, like a parachute that had been chewed up in a Cuisinart. I feel always like I'm in some hilarious movie about underachieving but instead of the laughtrack there's just crying, and that sound is coming from me.

On a good note, the money is pretty good. And I get to run home for lunch. There are some pretty disastrous kids, though. The only way I can get them interested in what we're doing is if we act everything out. I think reading while moving your body (hence, the play) is the only thing that makes sense for young bodies trapped behind desks. So as much as possible we read aloud, and talk about stuff. Mostly I have to stop thinking that I am a teacher. I go in there serious, like they're going to get their work done. Their teacher is counting on me. In reality, their teacher is like on a trip with their girlfriend, and they don't care that much if the kids finish their worksheets or not. But I don't like a day wasted. And that makes me a sub that is not much fun, because I remember as a kid that the sub that made you do the work was the sucky sub. I'm not giving up though, I'm still amateurishly thinking I can figure out how to do the work, make it fun, and still have time for a game at the end of the day. As a human, I'm more just interested in the soul and the personality of these kids - the puzzle that they are, the layers of human that they are. That's like a nice human eggroll, and I get like 25 in a batch. The work is sort of like the business end, the beginning middle and end, always nice to have on hand, the plot of the day. But the characters that fill it up are still the lively part. Also, I don't have to do that well. I'm always shooting for 120, and in reality I could do 60 and we'd all be okay, in fact, we'd be great.

The worst side effect is that subbing is making me all practical, and my whimsy is flailing slightly. So I write in here. To bolster myself. So I don't forget me. Whimsy - whimsy made me.