Storyteller

On Monday, the day before my flu symptoms kicked in, I read a story to my daughter’s first grade class.

This may or may not seem a big deal to you, but I’m an introverted guy, and I’ve always had internal trouble speaking in front of groups of anyone. Even though I’ve always done a good enough job at it, the prospect of public speaking terrifies me, as it does a good segment of the population.

Compound that with the fact that the Big Goal is to be a published author. Published authors make their living selling books. Published authors sell books by doing book signings and … book readings, in front of people. Now, I’m not ashamed of my fiction, and I know I do at least a passable job speaking in public, so what could possibly be the problem?

My irrational crazy self-destructive imagination, that’s what!

So when we found out early in the school year that Little One would be the Star Student the third week of January, I saw it for what it was. An opportunity for dad.

See, one of the treats the Star Student gets is that one of his or her parents comes in and reads a book to the class. Last year my wife read to our daughter’s kindergarten class. This year I realized it was time to man up and assume the mantle of public storyteller.

I justified it to myself that, hey, even though it’s not an appearance on C-SPAN Book TV or an exchange on the Charlie Rose show, it’s still experience. And when you have absolutely no experience, you take what you can get. In this case, reading to fifteen six-year-olds. It would make it that little less harder the next time I have to do it, which will hopefully be more on-track with my long-term career goal.

And hey, there’s always a danger when stepping in front of a group of first graders: honesty. Brutal honesty. Mess up, and they’ll let you know, usually with lots of finger-pointing and laughing.

An email exchange with my daughter’s teacher locked me in to a 9:30 Friday morning session. The night before I had Little One bring down ten – ten! – of her “favorite” books for me to triage to find an acceptable one. Acceptable meaning style and content: age-appropriate writing level and something for the boys as well as the girls. It proved a tougher task than it first seemed, as my daughter brought down everything from her pre-school picture books to her schizophrenic Fancy Nancy books to a book about Jesus and her Children’s Bible.

I picked one that I remembered took about fifteen minutes to read to her. Plus, it might showcase my unique vocal range, just in case I wanted to go the extra distance during my performance.

Anyway, we got snowed out last Friday. Though I wasn’t nervous and got all my sleep the night before, I did want to get it over with. So now I had seventy-two hours to forget about it.

Monday came quick enough, cold but clear, and I walked Little One to school. I returned home, had some breakfast, watched some teevee with the wife and Patch. Then I tucked my intended book under my arm and marched the three blocks and the twisting pathway to my daughter’s classroom.

The teacher greeted me warmly and introduced me to the class. Little One hovered about, proudly showing me off to her friends, who were all already sitting on a ten-by-ten foot rug by a window. I was told to have a seat in the “reading chair,” a catcher’s mitt of a wicker chair stuffed with bright red throw pillows. I sank into it so fast I had to white-knuckle the sides to keep eye-level with the children. My nervous smile quickly disappeared with a throat clearing.

“Let’s see,” I said. “I know you!” I pointed to my daughter’s BFF Steffie. Then I picked out a boy in the back. “I know you – you’re our neighbor!” I glanced around some more. “I know you … I know you, Colin, right? … I know you – we went to your party last month!”

I held up the book. “The book I’m going to read is one of our favorites: The Princess and the Magic Locket.” I opened the front corner. “It says here, ‘This book belongs to Sofia and Flynn.’ I don’t know who Sofia or Flynn is. We bought this book at a library book sale.”

Crickets. My observation was not received as witty, nor did a path for potential witticism open up.

Again I cleared the old pipes and began reading. A princess has a magic locket and a rhyme to let her cast spells. There’s a mean old witch who steals it and locks up the princess in a castle protected by a mean old dragon. But the mean old dragon actually is nice and befriends the princess. He contrives to bring young Prince Robert to the castle and the three defeat the witch. The dragon is rewarded and the Princess and Prince vow to be good friends.

Shortly into the reading the class began giggling uncontrollably. I raised my eyebrows and looked at the teacher. One of the girls blurted out, “You said, ‘Princess Robert’!” More hysterics ensued for about a minute. The teacher sympathized with me. “They’ll catch you every single time,” she chuckled knowingly.

The reading took about ten minutes. Then came the Q-and-A.

Little One was called up and stood next to me as a dozen little hands fluttered in the air to choruses of “ooh-oh”s and “me-me”s.

It’s amazing how focused these children are on colors at this age. I thought it was just my daughter. Every weekend during our errand runs I have to listen to her tick off the list of her favorite colors, often ten or more. So within a couple of minutes, the questions revolved around various permutations of me and/or Little One’s favorite, least favorite, and “middle favorite” colors.

Then there were a couple of questions about what I like to do with my daughter, and what she likes to do with me. These were nice. We came to a consensus that our favorite thing to do was play air hockey at the local arcade after our Saturday morning errands were all done.

I had to confirm Little One’s favorite food (spaghetti and meat balls). The boys asked a couple of sports questions (I happened to be wearing a Yankee baseball cap). An interesting question was asked about the most fun vacation we ever took. “Puerto Rico,” I said, and Little One agreed. “Not Niagara Falls?” the teacher asked, and seeing the puzzled look on my face, she continued, “Or the Grand Canyon?”

“We never went there,” I stammered, and Little One turned beet red. Seems she’s a budding storyteller of her own. “But we did go to Puerto Rico, and swam in the ocean, and swam in a pool right on a cliff overlooking the sea!”

A half-hour flew by remarkably fast, and the children were ushered to their desks. They still had a full day of schoolwork to get to. The teacher showed me to the door and thanked me. She seemed to enjoy it, as did all the children, my daughter especially. Oh, and I liked it, too!

Bring on C-SPAN Book TV!