Is it Afternoon Time?

Another "Sunday" posting from yours truly...only a day late... :)

I have a student who at 2:30pm, or so, will ask daily if it's afternoon time. He raises his hand firmly in the air and as I approach, he sits wide-eyed ready to ask me the inevitable question, "Ms. Katie, is it afternoon time yet?" By now, I am used to his quirks especially considering this is the same little guy who asks me to flush the toilet after he uses it because it scares him.

But my answer to his afternoon question was the same every time, "Well, it's 2:43pm (or 2:17pm or 2:30pm), so that makes it afternoon time."  I never caught on as to why he asked me this every day until this past Friday.

On Friday, like clockwork at 2:26pm, he confidently put his hand in the air. I asked him what was up and he asked me if it was afternoon time. I told him it was 2:26pm, so that made it afternoon time. Before I got up from my crouch I asked, "so why do you ask me that every day?"

He looked down at the ground and said, "I don't like afternoon time."

I asked, "why is that? It means you get to go home."

Without a beat he said, "that's why I don't like it. I want to stay here. I don't want to play with grown ups, here is more fun."

His statement hit my heart and I said, "well, Ms. Katie and Mr. McMahon are grown ups, what makes school so different than home?"

He whipped around and said, "Ms. Katie, you're not a grown up, you're a teacher!"

Truer words were never spoken before that moment. My lil' buddy was only foreshadowing my weekend as I headed into work Saturday morning for a "Meet and Play" at my school. Here, there were about 40 kids and 70 parents. My principal came up to me as I was hula hooping with a 5-year-old girl and said, "why don't you introduce yourself to some parents?"

I looked at her, of course dropped the hula hoop, and begrudgingly sulked off to find some grown ups to talk to. In that moment I thought of my little guy and his dislike of afternoon time and it all became clear.

I guess people gravitate toward those they relate to the most; and for me, and for my lil' friend, learning, laughing, getting excited over small things and enjoying a young spirit is our "day time". It is what gives us energy and life, it's what motivates us and it's always a little stinky when the afternoon comes and we have to do the things we don't naturally want to do.

I think it's important for me to keep in mind the thing I told my lil' friend to concentrate on: the positive to the day ending, is that it will begin again tomorrow and we can have the whole day to be together until it's afternoon time and we have to be with grown-ups again but eventually, the day time will come back.