There was Japan and Korea and Vietnam. There was England and Spain and France. There was Mexico and the USA. There were people dressed up in shiny dresses. There were tasty ethnic snacks. There was a guy playing folk songs on an acoustic guitar, and several classrooms down the hall there was another man playing the blues on an electric one. And there was a place in the hall with comfortable pillows spread in an arc around a man with a book.
“Welcome to Jabberwock,” he said.
Some kids stared back. Others’ faces lit up.
“I’m sad to say, we don’t have snacks,” he said. “What we’re going to do is poetry.”
They didn’t seem too disappointed about the snacks, and their reactions to the word poetry were certainly acceptable, so he figured he had a good audience. Indeed, he knew well that at this school, with these teachers, the students were certain to be a good audience, even for poetry.
‘Twas brillig and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe, he began.
After several stanzas of this he stopped. They talked about the poem. There was a monster in a forest, the kids told him. And a boy, they said. And a sword.
After a while, he leaned toward them and started over.
Il brilligue. Les toves lubricieux se guirrent en vriant dans les guaves.
Their eyes went round. They laughed stifled laughs, not sure if the ring of the French was something they could or should laugh about. The scooted back and forth on their pillows. They stole furtive glimpses of each other as the monster and the forest and the sword went by, with pantomime gestures to give them clues to the action.
And then after that, he leaned forward again.
Es brillig war. Die schlichten toven wirten und wimmelten in waben.
At this, even the boyest of the boys sat up. Some tried to mimick the –ch sounds as the monster and the forest and the sword went by yet again.
“Did you do this two years ago?” one of the fathers asked later.
“I did,” the man said.
“My older son was in fourth grade then. He said this was his favorite part.”
Even without snacks, the man thought. What validating feedback.
At the end of several hours, long after the snacks were gone and all the students had made their rounds from Japan to Mexico to Spain to England to … Jabberwock, the teachers lined the kids up on both sides of the hall and lined the parents up single file and had them run the gauntlet between the kids.
The kids cheered as the parents walked by. And they clapped. And they smiled. And they high-fived. And the smiles on the parents’ faces, oh you should have seen their smiles … and the smile on the face of that man.