Overheard at... school

“The eyeball was as big as a softball.”

Ewww! Talk about a great way to get a bunch of primary age kids to squeal. The principle was showing an news clipping about an eyeball that had washed up on a beach in Florida. It got their attention better than the announcement of an unexpected vacation day. Not only that, but the principle told the kids she was placing the newspaper article in the library for them to read themselves… clever indeed!

The kids were atwitter about what sort of sea creature would have an eyeball 10 inches in diameter. Maybe it was from a shark… or an octopus…Of course someone thought it could be from the Lock Ness Monster (I did not
interject the geographical difficulties of that.) One teacher wondered aloud what the creature would look like if it had a bunch of these eyeballs. Again, I repeat, ewwww!

It turns out that the eyeball was most likely from a very large (ya think!) swordfish; probably cut out by a fisherman and left to find its way to the spot most likely to scare children and sun birds. So not as exciting as imagined after all.

I am glad that at that point this explanation had not been publicized. I have noticed, during playdates and other interactions with children, that not all of them have as active an imagination as my daughter. And, this probably isn’t always a bad thing. Her imagination can lead to speculate on all kinds of crazy things, most of them having to do with natural disasters.

On the other hand, as we drove to school she was very excited to tell me that today their class would be writing their own myth. She had already come up with two, one about why crows were black, and another about how Native
Americans got dark hair. And last night, as we discussed (whined about) the many challenges she faced riding the field trip bus sans any activities to keep her distracted, we came up with a game she could play. Starting a verbal story with one line and then passing it to the next person to see what they came up with. We tried it out at the dinner table and managed to come up with a pretty cool story about a kid in Genie school who was the wrong color to become one.

I was reminded that there are always two sides to things: and what can often feel like a weakness can also be a strength.  Somewhere out there is another huge swordfish being stalked by fishermen. The positive thing though is that they obviously have a killer eye to see their predator coming.