Serves Me Right...tempting the fates

Sure enough serves me right
- Today I had to be more interesting
than throw-up. And I thought dog poop
was stiff competition? [See Jan 31st post]

Today I tested the power of storytelling.
For real.
A poor little 1st grader quietly let fly
right in the beginning of my presentation in a cafetorium
filled with 200 or so K- 2s sitting on their bottoms.

The Kindergardners were already a bit rambunctious
as it was. Luckily the

regurge throw up tossed cookies lost lunch sidewalk pizza technicolor yawn

was behind the K- folk who were not very attentive.

The space for 15 feet around was immediately evacuated.
This happened so quickly.
I scanned left to right as I spoke and
when I looked back, there was a hole in
what had been a
visual field full of kids.
In the middle of the large white space
was a huge puddle of
red vomit.
For quite a while the spot was vacant and
the other kids kept poking their heads up like
gophers to try and "see".

Finally, a teacher covered the 1 foot circle of
vomit, with small paper napkins.
This manouever took some time
but finally the fire engine red circle with orange chunks
was covered up. Mostly.

And then janitor came. Moving
with the measured, precise movements of a character in a Noh
play, he carefully swept then
he brought out sawdust and swept some more
and he came back with disinfectant
and sprayed and wiped and wiped again.

It was not a simple task. A laborious process.

But by god - I was more interesting than
throw up today. I never stopped and never lost the
crowd or my train of thought.

This is the POWER of storytelling.

Amen.
But I am still a bit queasy.