Educating Lila

My niece is in Kindergarten and she is learning to read and write. She can sound out simple words and even write a few of her own. It's very cool when they start to do that.

So the other day my niece and Lila were playing "homework" in the play room. It was very serious stuff. They were both quite upset when Violet would take a crayon and scrub on their homework papers. It was keeping them quiet, so I would redirect Violet as best as I could so they could play.

The next morning Lila came over to me with some papers in her hand. "Mama, do you want to see the homework we were working on yesterday? Wendy can write real words."

"Sure Li, let's have a look." I put down my magazine and she handed me the papers one at a time.

"This is mine." It was the word cat written a few times. There were some backwards C's and a few cat drawings on the page.

"Very nice Lila!" I handed the paper back to her.

"This one is Wendy's! She wrote real words!" Her joy was barely containable. I took the page from her and had a look. It did, in fact, contain real words. The entire page was covered with the words "POOP" and "PEE".

"Hmm...did she tell you what these words were?" I was thinking maybe she and Wendy had no idea. I once wrote the word F-U-C-K-Y-O-U in 3 foot chalk letters down the sidewalk. I had no idea what it meant, I had just seen it on a wall and remembered it. Not too surprisingly, my dad saw it too and the rest of that day is a blur.

"She said it was 'Poop' and 'Pee' !!" Lila erupted in a fit of giggles. This was clearly the funniest thing ever.

"Yup, babe. That's what it says alright." She took the paper back and walked away still giggling.

Older cousins can be so cool. They know just enough more than us to keep it interesting. The same can be said for older sisters, too. It was mine that wrote that nasty little epitaph on the wall that I ended up copying on the sidewalk. Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know.