Model Children

On Tuesday, I spent more time at LAX (or, as Sarah calls it, the ninth circle of hell) than actually flying. I spent forty-five minutes in the bookstore alone. In the lounge groups of little kids were playing around, getting their ya-yas out before being confined in a cramped metal tube with lots of disapproving adults. One small girl started making the most amazingly loud noise of discontent. Howling that would have made Ginsberg proud. When I turned around to look at her she even seemed amazed at herself that that big noise was coming out of her small body. The family looked a wee embarrassed.

On the plane I sat next to the most wonderfully earnest kid. He was wearing an "Incredibles" jersy with a five on the back (which makes him the firey baby?) and was about 12. He said please and thank you and excuse me in his gravelly voice. He watched the nature channel (on the tv on the back of the seat in front of him) all the way north and kept pointing out things the animals were doing to his dad, who had no interest at all in that, or in the snow patterns visible out the window, which were also fascinating to the kid. At one point we were flying over some very cool-looking volcanic mountains with perfect cone tops covered with snow and I tapped him on the shoulder to look. He said he always thought volcanos were islands, we talked about Hawaii, looked out the window some more and then he said, "thank you for showing me that." I'll bet he has a lot of balsa wood dinosaur skeletons at home.

I went in to my mom's grade four classroom on Wednesday morning. I got to stamp all their day planners and hear a bunch of oral reports on sea life (the sea anemome is sometimes called a pincushion; great blue herons can fly 30 miles an hour for 15 miles) and chat about movie-making. They wanted to know what actually goes down when the film melts on the projector and how they do stop-motion animation. Looking at that classroom of happy little kids engaged in active learning with an excellent teacher, I again resolved to try and make a lot of money if at all possible, so my kids could have an education like that.