Visited the school yesterday and, while hanging around, found myself reading the exhibits on the wall outside the Kindergarten classroom.
Embracing the idea of history and change occasioned by the dawning of a new decade (which it’s not. But don’t get me started on the whole “there was no Year 0” thing. I’ve accepted that very few people care, and that ignorance is apparently a much more attractive trait than pedantry) the 5-6 year olds had penned (pencilled) tiny treatises on the topic of “In the next decade I will…”
Here’s a partial list of what I saw
In the next decade I will…
- Get a job (complete with drawing of office desk and vase of flowers)
- Get a phone
- Get a car
- Get a phone
- Be driving
- Get a job at Target
- Drive a car
- Get a new phone (emphasis mine)
- Be getting a car (notice the subtle implication that someonKindergarten Aspirations 2010-2020e had better be buying this kid a car before their 16th birthday or else…)
And to counteract the chilling effect of most of those, there were a couple of sweet and probably untruthful ones which read
In the next decade I will
- Make my bed
- Help more
However, I now offer up my favourite, which I find just charming in its utter lack of imagination, because it sounds just like a five year old boy has sounded for hundreds of years: as befits a five year old:
n the next decade I will
- Get a new cap.
(Of course, it’s possible that I’m being hopelessly romantic and the kid simply misspelled ‘car’ )
PS I only have an hour between outings and figured I would keep on my tight, wriggly-into boots while writing this. But it has been so long since I’ve worked outside the home that it felt positively distracting to be typing with shoes on, and I was forced to shuck them so my toes could dig into the carpet like so much summer sand…