Sponge

Seth is in fourth grade and soaks up everything he hears at school.

A kid in his class at Heritage elementary was walking on the trails behind Wal-Mart with his dad.  Apparently, his dad stepped too close to a pond and an alligator bit him.  Seth knows this to be true because his friend swore to the tale’s veracity by all he held dear.

According to another fourth grade kid (not the alligator one),  the actor who sweats it out in the Barney outfit was fired because he secretly stashed cocaine in his tail and swore at kids on the set.   Seth is sure this is true, because his fourth grade friend says with the most honest of expressions that it’s so.  (snopes.com says the rumor is false – I checked)

Seth has since become skeptical of these stories.  Now that he knows these boys better, he understands that some kids simply lie a lot.  I saw him processing and evaluating, making judgments.

Seth learned about the hurricane that devastated Galveston in the early 1900’s.  He gave me the run-down.  He told me the name of the weatherman who should have realized the gravity of the coming storm but didn’t, on whose shoulders rested hundreds of deaths, including the death of his own wife.  There was an orphanage on the coast.  The nuns there, in an effort to not lose any of the children, had tied a rope around everyone’s waist (including their own), and then prayed.  Later, when rescue crews were searching for bodies, they found one of the children buried in the sand, and had only to follow the rope, again and again and again, to find the rest of the bodies.  

As Seth was telling me this story, he got emotional, told me how incredibly sad it was.  I watched as he felt and expressed empathy.

A published author visited his school.  She explained how she started writing stories for her son and his friends, who would all get off the bus at her stop just so they could hear the next chapter of the story.  She talked about the writing process, that she had written the first sentence of the book 40 times before she got it right.  Somehow, she was able to communicate that writing is fun, rewarding, worth the effort.

Seth is excited and motivated to write a book and have it published.  He already has a basic plotline and characters, although they have changed since the plot’s inception (from bat-type characters to bat-type-characters-with-fish-characteristics – so they can swim, of course).  

He even wants my help.  One thing I know for sure:  This won't last forever (him wanting my help that is). So I’m trying to be there, to listen, to help.  Even when, hypothetically speaking, having him following me around the house to tell me more details he had previously forgotten to relate could get the tiniest bit old.

Oh, my heart!  He’s growing up.

P.S.  After writing but before posting this, Seth came home from school in a huff.

"Guess what I learned at school today?!?  The teachers don't care about our feelings!!"

The hits just keep on coming . . .