Tuesday, September 30, 2014

adventures in impromptu docenting

[the scene is a small wigwam containing various artifacts for educational purposes, into which a horde of little kids has just swept, trapping a lone random adult inside and thus revealing one tactical problem with wigwam design]

Little Kid: What's this?
Lone Adult: It's a wolf skin.
Little Kid: Did they hurt the wolf?
Lone Adult: uh....
Tiny Kid: [picking up bird wing fan and hanging it around her neck] Did they buy these feathers?
Lone Adult: [trying to think how tactfully to explain where whole bird wings come from]
Other Little Kid: [picking up Algonquin war club and waving it around] What's this?
Lone Adult: It's really dangerous.
Other Little Kid: [holding up non-business end of same] You could poke somebody's eye out.
Lone Adult: Among other things...

[horde sweeps out again, leaving lone adult to ponder the evolutionary benefits of gnat-like attention spans]

4 comments:

  1. Were you the lone, random adult?

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    1. Yes. You can tell, because only I would just blurt out "It's a wolf skin" to a 5 year old instead of something more surfable, like "It's a blanket".

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  2. I take it those small children never watch the Discovery Channel? There's some pretty gruesome stuff there perpetuated by cute and fuzzy animals.

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    1. This was a very young crowd, so it's certainly possible that they haven't gotten to the "red in tooth and claw" part yet. And it'll be a little while before anyone explains how humans fit into that. But by the time they get to the purpose of an Algonquin war club, they'll probably have stopped listening.

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