Leapin' lizards

A few years ago I started doing creative writing workshops for 4th- and 5th-graders. I take them off the teachers' hands for an afternoon or, most recently, an hour each Monday. We write stories, we draw pictures, and I field 30,000 questions about how old I am (usually tailed by squeals of "You're older than MY MOM!"). This weekend I flipped through a pile of stories from various kidlets and stumbled upon my favorite souvenir.

My very first time out, I was doing an afternoon workshop for my friend Nancy's 4th graders. The big finish? I posted a picture of a lizard riding a bike and asked them to write a story about the picture. In return, we got the usual stuff: kids stood to read stories about shopaholic lizards hitting the mall, newts racing older brothers, robbers wearing lizard costumes, canyon-jumping chameleons (I almost made a Fonzie joke to them, but realized I was, oh, 2 decades late), etc. Good stuff. Then this lanky blond kid stood, shot me a grin, explained that he was *this close* to being finished, and cleared his throat to read: "The Race for Grandmother's Soul."

*needle on the record*

His was a tale of a scrappy little lizard who, upon watching this grandma get mowed down by a Schwinn-mounted gang, became consumed by his quest for revenge. I kid you not. I wanted to look at Nancy, perched in the back of the room biting through her lip, but I knew I'd lose my grip. While the students clapped in that stuttered way people do when they're not sure the play's over, he handed me his booklet. Would you believe me if I told you that the illustrations for "The Race for Grandmother's Soul" were a series of frames of the lizard smiling and waving at the reader and then, finally, standing in a pool of red? The way I see it, that young man is going to be famous or infamous. When that happens, remember that you heard it here first.

Little Billy in the Study with the Lead Pipe...

My good friend, Jessye, is a grade-school teacher. She's one of those otherworldly people who's always sweet, even-handed, pro-underdog, and unbelievably calm. If she weren't so incredibly genuine, you'd never buy it. It's a good thing she's such a cool customer, too, for Jessye once faced down one of the world's shortest super-villains...and won.

When she's not sussing out illegal porn-surfing in the grade school computer lab [and managing not to bang her own head against the wall when the perp exclaims in wide-eyed surprise, "How did THAT get there?"], Jess helps run a summer camp. One day, two of her campers started some snack-time scrapping and when she went to break it up, the smaller boy explained, "Billy poisoned me!" Now, knowing that school violence is no laughing matter, Jess decided not to smirk and looked to the accused (in my brain, he's a tiny little thing wearing a propeller beanie and licking a lollipop with a skull and crossbones on it). He copped to it, explaining that he simply offered his pal a cookie...and the minute he sank his teeth in, pointed and cried, "AH-HA! I've poisoned you!"

I don't know what I would've done in this situation. Certainly in the days of Columbine and Virginia Tech, you don't want to be the insensitive jerk who brushes it off, but I fear I wouldn't have shown half of Jess' composure: carefully taking each child aside, talking about why poisoned Oreos aren't comic genius and, then, having the "victim" checked out at the hospital. I mean, I guess I would've done these things but I would've HAD to add another step. Confronting the Lilliputian Lex Luthor and demanding to know WHY he'd decided to joke about poisoning someone. Poison. In the days of automatic weapon-soaked video games, this child chose to make an inappropriate joke about arsenic. Who does he think he is? Snidley Whiplash?!?! When other kids are reading" Worlds of WarCraft" cheat guides, is this kid thumbing through his dog-eared Agatha Christie collection? "I poisoned you?" This kid is old school...any day, now, I expect him to show up at camp in a top hat, twisting his pencil-thin moustache.

Jess, keep us posted...and hire a taster.