Last Friday Luna and I presented a special program for third-graders from a school where more than half the students are children of immigrants. Goudy Elementary is located so close to The Admiral at the Lake (a retirement community where I lead weekly memoir-writing classes) that they can walk there. They do exactly that every Friday to attend a reading buddies” program at theAdmiral. Each third-grader reads out loud to an assigned Admiral resident, their “reading buddy” and the Admiral Reading Buddy reads aloud to their third grade buddy, too.
Last Friday, though, things were a little different. The Admiral invited Luna and me to come give a special presentation to the Goudy third-graders about what it’s like to be blind and work with a Seeing Eye dog. The afternoon was delightful, and so were the children. Many of them had read my book Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound and arrived with a question on a card to ask me when it was their turn. Every single child told me their name, then introduced their question a la, “Hello, my name is Sunil, and here’s my question …”. Their older reading buddies were sitting further away, so I made a point to repeat each question so they could hear it, too. Some examples:
- What’s your dog’s favorite toy to play with?
- What are your biggest challenges if you’re blind?
- How does your dog know where he’s going?
- Does your dog understand English?
- Can your dog bark?
- How old is your dog?
- How old are you?
- Do you like cats?
- What’s your dog’s favorite game to play with you when you’re at home?
- What if your dog forgets to stop when it gets to the curb?
- How do you know what you’re wearing?
- Does your dog help you in the kitchen when you are cooking, too?
- If you had to walk lots and lots and lots of blocks to get somewhere, would you just ask someone to drive you there?
That last question gave me the opportunity to introduce all the kids to the friend who had driven Luna and me to the Admiral that day to give the presentation: my friend Ruth was there in the back, taking it all in. Weeks earlier Ruth happily agreed to go 50-50 with me so that each of the 50 children in Admiral’s Reading Buddy group would go home with a copy of my new Service Dogs book. The Admiral resident who emceed last Friday’s presentation last week sent me a email message thanking us for last week’s program and apologizing for not taking time to talk about the books that Ruth and I donated. “But I want you to know that when I held up the books to show the kids, they were so excited and happy!”
No apologies necessary there. Just thinking that some of those third-graders might have brought their new Service Dogs book to read to their Reading Buddies when they walked over to the Admiral today makes Ruth and me happy and excited, too!
I love all these school visits , but this just may be my favorite yet. Do you know how long that last sentence is?
Yes! I called on my editor (my husband, Mike) to shorten that last sentence but even he couldn’t do it. I’m open to suggestions, please leave them here!
I always enjoy your reports of visits to schools and children’s questions. For many years I walked on crutches and am now primarily in a wheelchair. Often a child will ask me a question about my disability., usually followed by an apology from a parent. I enjoy the questions and the children’s curiosity. I have been asked if I can take the crutches off, how do I climb stairs in a wheelchair, can they push me around, am I as short as I look, do I wear a seatbelt, and on and on. Each question is reasonable to a child and I am delighted to answer.
Great questions! Funny how parents apologize when their kids ask questions like these. I’d so much rather they ask questions than shy away from us!
Oh, Beth. These just keep getting better and better. But the one that asked, “How does your dog help in the kitchen?” is like no other. I can’t imagine how you answered that one. It must have been hysterical.
That one was easy to answer — I just shrugged and said, “I don’t cook!” From there I explained that I’m married, my husband Mike likes to cook and he does all the cooking in our house. “But even if I *did* cook, Seeing Eye dogs aren’t allowed to be in the kitchen with us,” I explained. “We don’t want them to eat something off the floor that might make them sick.”
Thank you, Beth, for all your presentations to the Goudy school children through the years. They love it and this is a high point of this program.
What a coincidence: being with the Goudy kids are always a high point in my calendar, too!
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