paperboy

i taught an afterschool program today for kids aged 6-11. i had been warned that this was a very high-energy group of kids- but honestly, who can blame them? it's a friday afternoon, for crying out loud. what kind of parent signs their kid up for a nature program on friday afternoons? and what kind of nature center leads programs for 6-11 year olds on friday afternoons? what were we thinking?

i took them on a seed scavenger hunt and they were pretty spastic, running around and screaming and yelling senseless stuff and not really focusing on the task at hand, which was supposed to be finding seeds. i saw this one boy named matt hanging on to a low limb of a white pine tree. the branch was probably three inches in diameter and matt probably weighed all of 40 some pounds, so i wasn't really at all worried about it, but suddenly the branch broke and fell on matt, pinning him to the ground. the little twigs formed a cage that kept him prostrate, even more so than the weight of the branch. i went over and lifted the branch off and checked out the small scratch along matt's nose (i guess we should all feel lucky that nothing poked him in the eye). we called an end to the search headed inside to further assess matt's injuries and a few minutes later he came up to me and said, "miss sarah, remember when that tree fell on me? well, when i was on the ground, i got this seed stuck in my hair." and i thought the kid wasn't focused.

when i got home and told matt the story, he recalled this scene from "while you were sleeping," one of my favorite moments in any movie ever.