(I'm gonna try again and see if mybloggers will bollix up my blog.)
I had written a blog about a visitor who brought her seven year old daughter along, and I how much I enjoyed having this child around. She was curious about everything. She was smart, funny, polite and kind. When "Astor" the child, saw a thread hanging off my pants leg, she said "Do you want me to get a pair of scissors so you can cut that off?"

She wanted to look at everything in my curio cabinet, so we ignored her mother and pulled everything out one by one so she could examine it. She lifted out the heavy lava rock mocajete mortar and pestle I had bought in Mexico and I explained that's what was used to grind things before blenders and food processors. She examined a lump of lava rock I brought back from Hawaii. She couldn't figure out how the abacus worked that I bought in Chinatown in New York City.
She admired a face carved in a coconut shell, then three brass pyramids I bought at The New Orlean's World fair in 1985, at the Egyptian pavilion. Astor said to her mother "We've got to travel more!" This made us laugh.

Every little thing was interesting and new to her. No one has asked me about all the stuff in the cabinet in years, so her keen interest made me smile. I gave her a little porcelain box from the cabinet that she could put her earrings in, and a comb and brush set, and five dollars for running a little sweeper vac over the floor--it was play for her, but I appreciated it.
Kids are smarter and sharper than they used to be. I imagined what it would be like to be a teacher facing a room full of bright little faces so eager to learn things, and how you could fill their minds with knowledge--but I suspect the school routine is deadly dull, rote and stifling which is such a shame.

susil