sewing stories vol. 1

Since I started teaching alongside my grandmother, it has been a goal of mine to keep a notebook of the entertaining things the sewing students say during classes. I think if Memaw had kept such a book, she would have had it published years ago and be a wealthy woman because of the entertainment value found within it. Kids really do say the craziest things! I love it! So here is my first installment of just two of my favorite things that have happened since I began teaching:

1.) We play games in class all the time. With the younger girls, we usually play alphabet-related games, because they generally all know the alphabet, and will join in the game. In one of our favorites, appropriately named 'The Animal Game', we go around the table and say as many animals we can think of that begin with the letter 'A'. If you can't think of any more, you give up your turn until the next letter. After we've named every 'A' animal we can think of, we move on to 'B', and so forth.

A few weeks ago, we were playing this game in one of our classes, and the girls were becoming rather impatient with one another. We were on letter 'C' when one of the students said, "Ooooooh!!! I have a great one for 'G'!! Can we skip to 'G'? Pleeeease? I have such a good one!" She was deeply enthusiastic about her 'G' animal, to say the least. I informed her that we had to continue on in the alphabet, and maybe we would get to 'G' before class ended. We went on and on, and every time it would come to her, she would beg, again, to "Please skip to 'G'".

The end of class came, and we'd only made it to the letter 'E'. She was so disappointed, so I asked if she would like to share her 'G' animal before we left since she'd been so [im]patient. Without missing a beat, she said, "JELLYFISH!" Poor thing, it was an easy mistake!


2.)One day during another class, for some reason, the students started discussing their ethnic backgrounds. One of the little ladies said, "I'm half indian, ya know." Knowing full well she was not half indian, I just nodded and went along with it. This spurred all of the other girls on to tell (or more appropriately - make up) their own ancestral heritage. One shouted, "Well I'm half Irish, and my mom is part French." Another said, a little louder, "I'm part Scottish, and also Indian." It was getting more entertaining by the second as they each added more and more variation to their genetic make-up.

Then, out of nowhere, the one little girl who'd remained silent through all of that spoke out louder than any of the others and said, "Well I'm a MAMMAL!". She may have been the only girl in the room who was right!