A girl hastily draws a rough outline of a stocking. She clutches it in her fist and shoves it toward me and says, THIS.
Yes! A stocking!
I draw a picture of a fireplace on the screechy chalkboard and the kids breathe out an audible ahhhh as they understand where I'm headed.
They clap their hands when I finish, thrilled that there was a point of connection between their language and mine. That's the thing about art--it's universal.
Okay. You remember what is UNDER the tree, and what is ON the tree, what goes IN the stockings?
A diminutive seventh grader (I seem to remember a newspaper once referring to me in the exact same terms when I was in a play) in the back says, unabashedly, FIREEEEE!
Fire???!
The class laughs.
A young boy on the front row on the far left shouts, FIRE IN DZE HOLE!!! pulls the trigger out of an imaginary grenade, and throws it out the window into the cold air as he plugs his ears.
I have the best students.
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