it pays to have an imagination

Jispa told me that she is going to learn about Helen Keller. Hmmm. I think I remember. She was the blind lady, right? I ask. Yes, but you mustn’t say blind. She was hearing impaired and seeing impaired. Blind and deaf are bad words. Ok ok. I understand. Thank you Jispa. Jispa also told me about her teacher, Ms Sullivan. A ha… yes now I remember the story. I told her that her teacher put her hand under running water and then wrote the letters on her palm. Yes, Jispa recollected that part as well. It’s quite a cute story. She was only introduced to Helen’s story. The detailed study is to follow.
She also a subject called creative writing. That’s a pretty cool subject where you write stories. The teacher gives a topic and then puts up a chart with some guidelines. Basically a set of four points to follow. For the essay on a gift the first point was like who gave you the gift and why.
I want her to ask the teacher if she is allowed to invent words and write them in the creative writing class. I mean as the name suggests it is a creative writing class, isn’t it? How about words like rubicked - used to describe an action of the dog as he rubs against your leg and licks your ankles or a kiduth – when a kid tells you the truth as she sees it but goes against popularly accepted norms. For example, a tooth fairy comes and writes notes to her. Let me try and get Jispa to do something like this in her class. That should be real fun.
Today morning she was angry at Jasmine while she was wearing her school uniform. Why? Well Jasmine hadn’t buttoned the uniform shirt while she was ironing it. Does Jispa hate buttoning it? No. what she wanted to do was take the buttoned shirt, unbutton it, then wear it, then button it. Simple. Poor Jasmine was needlessly exasperated. Everybody should like doing chores that a complete waste of time, nah? I got in to explain that “if that’s the right thing to do then I would scribble all over the books and then you would have to erase it all before writing on it”. Jispa replied – “ok”. To which I said “not any books, I will do it in your school books”. “teacher will scold you” “I will say that Jispa likes it” “but I will say that I did not like it and papa did it” “I will say that Jispa likes it like that only, the same way Jispa likes the shirt to be buttoned before it is unbuttoned and then buttoned again” “huff (make face, silence) huff (again)”. Please add one point to my tally.