“Cute is to Winnie as round is to ball”, said Luke, as we sat in his
office one afternoon after work. He was in his chair and I was in the
giant puff with Winnie in my lap. She had come to snuggle and brought
her infamous ball with her.
“That is an analogy for you…” he said. With the mention of analogies, I
was instantly sent back to Mrs. Dawson’s 5th grade Language Arts
class. That is when I first learned about analogies, in her cool room
with the desks shaped in a giant U shape. I began to explain my
recollection about first learning this amazing literary term to Luke.
To keep his attention I include the part about the cool seating
arrangement, and how “Isn’t it cool that teachers get to pick the way
their desks are set up every year? What a fun thing to decide(he once
had a teacher who set all her desks up in a snake formation, and then
they played a mean game of flash cards in which Luke was often
disappointed in his performance…but that is another story)…”
As I am telling Luke about Mrs. Dawson, Winnie got up from my lap and
left her ball. I started tossing the ball and catching it and I
remember something else about that class.
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” I said to Luke. He looked intrigued.
So here goes. For the first 10 minutes of each class, we worked on
sentence editing on the whiteboard. She gave us 5 minutes to correct
the sentence on our paper. Then if we knew a correction we could raise
our hand, she would throw us a soft nerf ball, and we would go write
our answer on the whiteboard. I say “we” but therein lies my secret:
I never raised my hand. Though this activity included 3 of my other
favorite activities: editing sentences, being right, and using dry
erase markers, I was too afraid that I wouldn’t catch that ball to
ever raise my hand. So I never tried! I almost always knew the
answers, but never admitted it for fear of embarrassment. Not so much
fear that I would be wrong, but that I would drop the ball. Other
people had dropped the ball, and they were still accepted, so… What
did I possibly think was the worst thing that could happen? **as I
reread what I ‘ve written I come to another conclusion…perhaps the
phrase “dropped the ball” was heard too often as a child, and I
associated it with really seriously effing up?? Perhaps taking things
a little too literally is another lesson to learn in time**
I am confessing this to Luke, analyzing/overanalyzing myself even
further… and I conclude that I am afraid this is might be a recurring
theme in my life. Not trying to go for certain things because I am
afraid I will fail/drop the ball. Then I realize that the story I told
Luke about dropping the ball is totally an analogy for my life! And
then, the fact that Luke’s analogy is what made me think of this in
the first place, and Luke mentioned analogies because of the Winnie
Poodle, and the Winnie poodle is the reason the ball came into my
hands, the ball ties into my memory, my great analogy… Whoa.
FULL CIRCLE
And then the buzzer rang for dinner.
office one afternoon after work. He was in his chair and I was in the
giant puff with Winnie in my lap. She had come to snuggle and brought
her infamous ball with her.
“That is an analogy for you…” he said. With the mention of analogies, I
was instantly sent back to Mrs. Dawson’s 5th grade Language Arts
class. That is when I first learned about analogies, in her cool room
with the desks shaped in a giant U shape. I began to explain my
recollection about first learning this amazing literary term to Luke.
To keep his attention I include the part about the cool seating
arrangement, and how “Isn’t it cool that teachers get to pick the way
their desks are set up every year? What a fun thing to decide(he once
had a teacher who set all her desks up in a snake formation, and then
they played a mean game of flash cards in which Luke was often
disappointed in his performance…but that is another story)…”
As I am telling Luke about Mrs. Dawson, Winnie got up from my lap and
left her ball. I started tossing the ball and catching it and I
remember something else about that class.
“I’m going to tell you a secret,” I said to Luke. He looked intrigued.
So here goes. For the first 10 minutes of each class, we worked on
sentence editing on the whiteboard. She gave us 5 minutes to correct
the sentence on our paper. Then if we knew a correction we could raise
our hand, she would throw us a soft nerf ball, and we would go write
our answer on the whiteboard. I say “we” but therein lies my secret:
I never raised my hand. Though this activity included 3 of my other
favorite activities: editing sentences, being right, and using dry
erase markers, I was too afraid that I wouldn’t catch that ball to
ever raise my hand. So I never tried! I almost always knew the
answers, but never admitted it for fear of embarrassment. Not so much
fear that I would be wrong, but that I would drop the ball. Other
people had dropped the ball, and they were still accepted, so… What
did I possibly think was the worst thing that could happen? **as I
reread what I ‘ve written I come to another conclusion…perhaps the
phrase “dropped the ball” was heard too often as a child, and I
associated it with really seriously effing up?? Perhaps taking things
a little too literally is another lesson to learn in time**
I am confessing this to Luke, analyzing/overanalyzing myself even
further… and I conclude that I am afraid this is might be a recurring
theme in my life. Not trying to go for certain things because I am
afraid I will fail/drop the ball. Then I realize that the story I told
Luke about dropping the ball is totally an analogy for my life! And
then, the fact that Luke’s analogy is what made me think of this in
the first place, and Luke mentioned analogies because of the Winnie
Poodle, and the Winnie poodle is the reason the ball came into my
hands, the ball ties into my memory, my great analogy… Whoa.
FULL CIRCLE
And then the buzzer rang for dinner.