Ctllif - Advice From Two Generations Down

Got a wad of grandkids (14, 7, and barely 5) over for a couple of days. Since they all think the sun rises and sets on Gramma and Grampa (the Beneficiary and me) this is almost always a pretty good time. They watch us all the time, learning, which I knew, but which really came home this morning with a bit of unintentional advice I got from the 5 year old.

The Beneficiary is an artist, y'see, and absolutely refuses to restrict any artistic project visiting grandkids decide to engage in and usually by the end of one of their visits we're knee-deep in water-colors, drawings, paint, sculptor's clay, colored pencils, crayons, paper-mache, paste, scissored paper that sometimes seems as fine as dust, and hand-drawn window decals made with colorful and occasionally removable felt-tip pen ink.

This visit, I vaguely wondered what the 7 and barely 5 year olds were doing when they dug a couple of pocket-sized notebooks and some ballpoint pens out of those art supplies (which they always have free-range access to) and began carrying them around drawing in them.

It seems that they had noticed that Grampa always carries a notebook with him and frequently writes stories in it about things. Now, the barely 5 year old can write her name sister and brother's names, but not much else. She knows letters, and knows that writing and putting them together makes words, so she writes a lot. She just hasn't got much that's readable. She combines these with drawings on the pages to elucidate some of the finer points.

She brought her notebook to me. She sat down next to me in my recliner and opened it to a page with a drawing. She explained that it was a picture of a girl who was lost on the ocean and went a long ways, then met a dragon. It turned out it was a nice dragon. She then pointed to a word she'd printed: "Ctllif," and asked me what it said. I told her she'd written it — what did SHE think it said? She looked at me like I was a bit slow and told me a little impatiently that she'd written it, but she can't read, so she needed me to tell her what it said.

"Ah, I see," I said. "Well, it sort of looks like it might say 'Sit-ILL-If'" (while pointing and sounding out each letter.)

"Yes," she said without a pause, "that's the dragon's name." She then went on with filling out more pages. For the rest of the afternoon, anyone who asked what she was doing got more of the continuing adventures of the girl and Citillif the dragon.

Y'know what? She's right. It doesn't matter if it makes sense to anyone else. Just write the damned story.  Smart kid.

In Our Next Episode:  More adventures of Citillif.