Jenny and Mark had left along with the kids a while ago. They had to be at school on time — the kids in their classes, Jenny and Mark in charge of theirs. I got to hang out at their house a bit longer, sit with Zeus in the shade in the backyard, drink hot Chock-full-o-nuts coffee and leave scribbled messages lying around the kitchen.<\/p>\n
And then all of the sudden, it was time to leave.<\/p>\n
Are you kidding me? I had plenty of time, and now I’m in a rush!?<\/em> I got in the boat-car, and drove down the street and waited in traffic.<\/p>\n Now Somerset is not a large city. And the schools are just a stone’s throw away from where they live. But I’ll be darned, I got caught in some kind of rush hour right there waiting for the light to turn green. And now I was looking at my watch thinking, Are you kidding me? I’m going to be late!?<\/em><\/p>\n But a stone’s throw is not far. <\/p>\n The first stop was Meece Middle School. They had me lined up to talk to the eighth graders. What was it? Five classes of them?<\/p>\n As the kids started coming in, the teachers arranged them because there were more streaming in from the hallway. <\/p>\n There was Mark. And there was Jenny. They looked like teachers — for obvious reasons. And when it was time to start, Jenny introduced me. She told the eighth graders how she was sure<\/strong><\/em> they were going to make her proud<\/em><\/strong> and pay attention and treat the speaker with respect<\/em><\/strong>. And the look on her face was… Well, she looked like a serious teacher<\/em>.<\/p>\n “What she didn’t tell you,” I said when I was given the floor, “is that I’m her cousin.” (Was I not supposed to mention that?)<\/p>\n First came the Jabberwocky. This was what I came to Kentucky for. There was the English version, where I spoke the partially understandable nonsense along with some pantomiming that I promised to do in the French and German so that they might try to follow along. Then came French. Then German. And after that, I gave a space talk about Mercury, Gemini and Apollo and the baby steps to the moon, complete with my favorite rocket pictures.<\/p>\n The kids did make her proud.<\/p>\n A bit of a break. Some time to let my voice recover. And then came the seventh graders. What was it? Five more classes?<\/p>\n There was Jack. I winked at him. There was Julia. She stared at me and smiled.<\/p>\n English… French… German… Umarme mich mein boehmsches Kind!<\/em> And then the baby steps to the moon.<\/p>\n I hopped in the boat-car and drove to Hopkins Elementary School, less than a stone’s throw away from Meece.<\/p>\n Yesterday had been eclipse day, and today I had a late afternoon return flight to Austin just so that I might spend as much time as the Somerset schools might spare. And so they lined me up to talk to the third graders. What was it? Five classes of them?<\/p>\n English. French. German. Baby steps. Rockets.<\/p>\n And now my voice was getting weak. Frankly, I was surprised I’d made it this far. They had given me a microphone just in case. I used it.<\/p>\n The final round was the fourth graders. What was it? Five more classes?<\/p>\n There was Katherine sitting in the middle of the room. I went over and gave her a hug.<\/p>\n And then English. French. German. Baby steps. Rockets.<\/p>\n And with that, I hopped in the boat-car and drove back to the middle school where Jenny was waiting in the parking lot. I moved over. She sat behind the wheel and drove us thru black skies, torrential rain and tornadic winds to get me to the airport with time to spare.<\/p>\n I was beat. I mean dirt tired<\/em>.<\/p>\n But I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in my entire life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. Getting to School On Time Jenny and Mark had left along with the kids a while ago. They had to be at school on time — the kids in their classes, Jenny and Mark in charge of theirs. I got to hang out at their house a bit longer, sit with Zeus in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4772"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4780,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions\/4780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Meece Middle School<\/h3>\n
3. Hopkins Elementary<\/h3>\n