Bob Vila’s Tips for Kids
As a kid, I never really grasped the concept of what was and wasn’t appropriate for Show & Tell. While other children brought pets or awesome Christmas toys, I had head-scratching items, like a chunk of a rotting tree stump from my backyard. I brought it because it resembled the side of a mountain cliff (?), despite it’s wood-y appearance and mushy texture. Furthermore, I insisted I wanted to start a group at school called “The Cliff Club,” where we would ostensibly talk about…cliffs, because that sounds like something that’d interest 7 year olds.
My finest “Show & Tell Moment,” though, came in 1st Grade, when I wanted to let my classmates know I’d put together what I saw as a pretty rad ninja costume. It was just black pants, a black turtle neck pulled up to my nose, and then a second shirt worn on my head like a bandana and tucked into the back of the turtleneck. So, the only person who thought this was amazing was…me.
I somehow convinced both my mother and teacher to let me show everybody this earth-shattering discovery, but when I took my backpack into the bathroom to change I realized I’d left the second shirt at home, which meant I was standing in the bathroom, waiting to emerge and wow my classmates with the big reveal of me owning a black turtleneck.
Of my two choices (hide in the bathroom until school let out or try to make this failed costume work), I chose B. I pulled the shirt over my head, resembling this, and leapt out of the bathroom roaring like a neurotic tiger, because we all know ninjas roar (yelling, of course, is a great misdirect not a great misdirect)
Needless to say, nobody understood what was going on or, more importantly, why it was going on. Neither did I.
Not sure why I woke up thinking about this story. I think the lesson here is “double check things” and, in the words of Bob Vila and then dads everywhere, “Measure twice, cut once,” but I’d also advocate for “Show & Tell just brings out the weirdness in already odd children.”
