Friday, October 22, 2004
You can try to think up some elegant sophisticated description for today (dank, dreary, cold & rainy) but the only completely accurate description for today’s weather is “ICKY!”
It’s fun how kids pick up words and assign meaning to them based on their own logic.(If you’ve read the Ramona Quimby books, you might remember Ramona coming to the conclusion that a “dawnzer” is a fancy word for lamp). As a kid, I thought “blasphemous” was word that described icky weather (like today’s). Which brings back a funny memory (funny only in retrospect).
- The scene -
It’s an icky fall day like today. Julie is in Mrs. Homan’s 1st grade class (room 10) and we are having our morning classroom meeting. (In the classroom meeting we would do the calendar, talk about the weather, assign classroom jobs for the day, count to 100, etc.)
On this day (like every other day) Mrs. Homan asked the class about the weather. (She was looking for simple words like “rainy” “cold” or “cloudy.”) 6 year old Julie raises her hand and announces that it is a “blasphemous” day.
Mrs. Homan was an awesome first grade teacher. She didn’t laugh (although she might have smiled) and asked me what that meant. (I felt so smart!) I explained that it meant “cold and kinda rainy without actually raining, and windy and dark – all at the same time.” (I remember it vividly!) Mrs. Homan (being the super first grade teacher she was) suggested we use those words for our weather chart instead of “blasphemous”. Afterwards quietly pulled me aside and said that it wasn’t a very nice word and not to say it (from that point on I thought “blasphemous” was a swear word that described icky weather. It wasn’t until 7th grade that I learned the real definition.) But I like my meaning better.
Today is most definitely a blasphemous today.
(And I don’t like YA - but that's irrelevant and 'ya already know that).
It’s fun how kids pick up words and assign meaning to them based on their own logic.(If you’ve read the Ramona Quimby books, you might remember Ramona coming to the conclusion that a “dawnzer” is a fancy word for lamp). As a kid, I thought “blasphemous” was word that described icky weather (like today’s). Which brings back a funny memory (funny only in retrospect).
- The scene -
It’s an icky fall day like today. Julie is in Mrs. Homan’s 1st grade class (room 10) and we are having our morning classroom meeting. (In the classroom meeting we would do the calendar, talk about the weather, assign classroom jobs for the day, count to 100, etc.)
On this day (like every other day) Mrs. Homan asked the class about the weather. (She was looking for simple words like “rainy” “cold” or “cloudy.”) 6 year old Julie raises her hand and announces that it is a “blasphemous” day.
Mrs. Homan was an awesome first grade teacher. She didn’t laugh (although she might have smiled) and asked me what that meant. (I felt so smart!) I explained that it meant “cold and kinda rainy without actually raining, and windy and dark – all at the same time.” (I remember it vividly!) Mrs. Homan (being the super first grade teacher she was) suggested we use those words for our weather chart instead of “blasphemous”. Afterwards quietly pulled me aside and said that it wasn’t a very nice word and not to say it (from that point on I thought “blasphemous” was a swear word that described icky weather. It wasn’t until 7th grade that I learned the real definition.) But I like my meaning better.
Today is most definitely a blasphemous today.
(And I don’t like YA - but that's irrelevant and 'ya already know that).