Margie was the volunteer parent for Katherine’s Daisy meeting after school today. She had to put together a lesson on the “orange petal” of the Girl Scout Law (“I will do my best to be … responsible for what I say and do ….”).
From a big sheet of white paper she cut out white petals, one for each girl. Each girl put a drawing on it of things that made them happy. While drawing, they talked about “help words” and “hurting words.” When they finished their drawings, they chose a helping word/phrase to write on them (writing done by the adult leaders). (Examples: “Please,” “Thank you,” “Excuse me,” “I like you,” “Will you play with me?” “Bless you,” “I’m sorry,” “Happy Valentines Day,” “I love you.”)
Margie had drawn a yellow center for the flower on a flip chart from the school office, and the girls glued their petals all around it. The girls then all sat in front of the flip chart and went through all the petals.
Fun.
(And she made it all up, ladies and gentlemen.)
There were twelve girls, and it worked out perfectly, petal-wise.
The leaders asked to keep it to show it at the next leadership meeting, which is cool.
And my question?
“Katherine, how did Mommy do?”
“Great!”
Yup.
While I have a self-image as a largely reason- and intellect-based person, the fact is that I’m an incurable romantic about a lot of stuff. So it is that I get terribly gooey with emotion over things like my incredible, wonderful, perfectly-fitting wife when occasions like Valentine’s Day roll around, and I’m forced to do things like proclaim loudly in public fora assertions such as “I LOVE MY WIFE WITH PROFOUND AND AMAZING PASSION!” and “MY HEART IS YOURS, MARGIE, AND WILL BE FOREVER!” and very sentimental bits like that.