Top 5 McCanless-isms this week (and it’s only Wednesday)

…becoming more culturally aware

1-She and I were discussing what she should wear to school the following day. It was a P.E. day and I was insisting that she wear her New Balance athletic shoes. She insisted that she wear her black sparkly Converse All-Star shoes(Chucks), which I guess, really are tennis shoes. (I later realized that her P.E. teacher wears black Chucks often.) We argued a bit, and finally, frustrated, she says to me, “Mommy, I have to wear these! My BROWN teacher told me I have to.” I stopped and thought for a moment and finally realized that she was talking about her African- American P.E. teacher, Ms. Selena.

2-I was sitting on the floor with Mary Clare and asked McCanless to join us and chat with me about school. She came dancing over, wiggling and swaying her arms and said, “I’ll go down to the ground like James Brown.” (Ms. Chure has quite a sense of humor and uses her tongue and cheek jokes with the kids often!)

3-McCanless was speaking of her new friend, Journey, quite often this week. “Mommy, Journey had a cool lunch…Mommy, Journey has a big cat….Mommy, I love Journey’s hair.” She even went so far as to tell me she wanted her hair to look just like Journey’s. Yesterday, I decided to go meet Journey and as I walked into the lunchroom during my break, I noticed McCanless speaking to a little girl that I just had a feeling might be Journey. She was a precious “brown” girl with a million tiny braids and beads covering her head. I’m not so sure I can get that many braids in McCanless’ hair, but I just may try.

…and a few other

4-I noticed a jar of rocks outside of McCanless’ classroom this week. Under the jar was a chart with handwritten names (by the students) and numbers of their guesses to how many rocks they thought were in the jar. Most students had written familiar numbers like 4, 8, 2, etc. McCanless had 299 on her guess line. Later, I asked her why she chose 299. Her response was, “Mom, clearly, there are 299 rocks. That’s as far as I can count.”

5-Today, I had just about had it with her. I was in the grocery store checking out. Mary Clare was fussy, I had a cart full of groceries and it began to storm outside. Mel called to tell me he wouldn’t be home until after 8pm, and McCanless was screaming for some jelly candy squirt gun. I told her no, she pitched a fit and I ignored her, which typically works for this type of incident. I paid and began to sulk over the daunting task of loading and unloading groceries in the pouring rain with two foul kids. McCanless said, “Fine. I’ll buy it myself.” Then she ran. She ran out of the automatic doors with her candy gun into the rain and all the way down to the Chinese restaurant to hide behind the Pepsi machine. Oh, not today. I grabbed Mary Clare who dropped her cookie and began to cry. Why today? I left my purse and groceries and ran into the rain. I found McCanless and pulled her back to the grocery store. After what probably seemed like an exorcism to onlookers with McCanless and I both refusing to give up, soaking wet I grabbed the gun from her and took it back to a very reluctant cashier who looked at me as if I were an armed robber with my candy gun. We spent the car ride home talking about stealing and disobeying mommy, to put it nicely.

(Just thought I’d also mention that the last time McCanless wanted to help pay for groceries, I handed her a bill to give to the cashier. She took it from me and began to flatten it and straighten it out. She then slid it down the debit card machine where one would typically slide a card. Guess I should also give the “Money doesn’t grow on trees and isn’t always plastic” lesson too.)

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