I guess I was a bit bored as I waited for the copy machine to run-off 120 pages. I began singing “Oh do you know the muffin man that lives on Mulberry Lane?” I was startled by a laugh from around the corner where Iva Gail works, “Joan have you entered your second childhood?”
Oops, I forgot I was at work, but some parts of this job are a lot like my first childhood.
Remember the essay, “Everything I ever needed to know I learned in kindergarten?”
In kindergarten, we cut, pasted, worked puzzles, practiced our ABCs and played games.
My fist day here they gave me a pair of scissors, newspaper and tape. “Cut out the local news stories, tape together matching pieces of story and make copies. Then cut apart the stories duplicated on the same page and pile them on the editor’s desk.”
As I make copies, I watch the production workers, Gloria and Janice deftly measure, cut and fit everything together onto the newspaper-sized sheets of graph paper. One morning as I fitted the clippings together on the copy machine, I said something about my puzzle. Billie, another production worker, heard me and laughed. “Sometimes friends ask why I don’t do jigsaw puzzles at night. I say ‘why should I? I do that all day long.’”
I wish I were as adept as the production workers are. I fumbled to pasted a comic strip on a piece of cardboard to make a greeting card before Nina rescued me and flicked it together in a couple of minutes.
Back downstairs, I fold and file the clippings away in envelopes for future reference and recite Dr. Seuss’s ABCs mentally with the same cadence I used to read it to my preschoolers.
“Big A, little a, what begins with A?” Accidents, alternative school and Arkansas legislature, A, a, a.”
Big E, little e, what begins with E?
Earth day, El Dorado government and elections, e, e, e.
Remember when it was fun to get the mail? – before you know about bills?
The business department gets the bills and I open the colorful, eye-catching letters, packages and cards that organizations send trying to snag the editor’s attention to publish their stories, ideas, promotionals or announcement of new projects.
And then there is playing games. The past couple of years I spent hours absorbed with computer games.
Now I am as absorbed working my way through the blanks of computerized forms for weddings, engagement and anniversaries entering names, dress descriptions and personal histories and copying syndicated columnists. However, when I have finished typing in Dear Abby, Lewis Grizzard and Raspberry, instead of a new high score, I have a mind full of ideas that are interesting, thought-provoking or funny.
Every good kindergarten lass includes time for “Show and Tell.” That about sums up what I do in this column as I tell what is going on in my life.
Kindergartners glow when they are praised. They are expected to remember their manners.
I am glowing from the praise of my writing by many.
Thanks for noticing.
Bit T, little t, what begins with T?
Thank you, thanks you, thank you, t, t t.