Show and Tell

We used to do fun things in Elementary School. Maybe we didn’t learn what we were supposed to – that’s a debate for another time – but we made flowery hats, put on classroom productions of Cinderella, learned to square dance. We did things that made us want to come back. Is Education today measuring up? We had show and tell.

It wasn’t my own best ‘event,’ mind you. I have the impression, now, that I was a shy child – who knows whether that was actually the case – but I know I never liked ‘show and tell’ or any other occasion where I had to be in front of people doing extemporaneous speech. Horrors! Others liked it though, not that they actually said anything themselves, focusing rather more on the ‘show’ part than the ‘tell’, it seems to me. We got to see a wide range of ‘found’ objects – driftwood, rocks that were shaped like Nevada, souvenirs from family vacations – but the explanations of origin or relevance were somewhat lacking.

When my own son was in kindergarten he wanted desperately to bring in the family dog for ‘show and tell.’ Our Irish Setter, Cinnamon, was pretty old and gray by that time and I figured the experience wouldn’t be too traumatic for either of them. So one day, teacher permission obtained, Cinnamon was loaded up with the lunchbox and trucked off to school. She was very polite. She lay on the rug and showed her profile off to its best advantage. She didn’t drool. She let everyone pet her. Todd beamed. He got to hold her leash.

He didn’t say a word.

Oh well. I have a picture of them. You can’t really tell, from the picture, that it was a silent show. But you can see he had a good time.

You ought to be able to have a good time in elementary school. Once in a while at least.

For emphasis, here is my own ‘show and tell’ for the day:


It’s Maddie. She is a ‘mutant’ with too many toes. Seven on each front foot. I have this to say about her:

“……………………….”

That's it.