594. Norks and Noogly

I’ve come to know that when children who are good friends argue, they usually remain good friends. But they often don’t know that. One child may angrily and earnestly say, “I’m never playing with you again.” Another may think the world has come to an end; without that particular friendship, nothing will ever be right…

I’ve written lots of prose for this column, but one of my poems, “The Trying Game,” says part of what I want to say in this article. So I’ll start with the poem: We try. No matter what, we try. From when we’re born till when we die. We try to be, or try to…

A teacher once asked me to help a girl named Jezebel practice the times tables. Once a day, the class played a game that required knowledge of times tables. Children had to answer quickly, so that it would be clear that they were not figuring out answers – just knowing them. Learning the times tables…

In the fall of 1960, I started seventh grade. I was twelve years old, and I’d just changed from a soprano to a baritone. Memorial Junior High School had seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, and I was put in the ninth grade chorus, where there was a baritone section. I felt as if I’d skipped…

I wrote 315 articles in about 500 days, rarely pausing for more than two days. But I’ve just finished about two weeks during which I didn’t write any articles, and then 24 hours during which I wrote four. If I were taking my roles as columnist and author more seriously, the two week gap would…

Sometimes a child says something cute, profound, or otherwise noteworthy, and I really want to tell an adult about it. Recently, a child asked me for help with a math problem, and as I was helping her, I realized that she didn’t need help at all. I said to her, “I get the feeling that…