wild things.

I hung out with some kindergartners yesterday, and I'm not going to lie-- I was really dreading it. Little people (especially in large groups) are not really my thing. With an hour to fill, I figured some kind of story-time situation would be my best bet. I searched through a few tubs of books, and got pretty excited when I came upon the Wild Things. WIN.

In case you've never read this little gem, it's pretty short and sweet. There's a kid named Max, and he's a little mischievous. Naturally, his mom isn't super psyched about this, so he gets sent to bed without dinner. This isn't a big problem for Max, because he has a pretty wild imagination-- which takes him on an adventure to where the wild things are. At first, the wild things are a little scary-- but they think Max is a pretty cool kid and make him king of the wild things. They party down for a while (enter, the wild rumpus), but eventually Max gets homesick and makes his way home, where a hot dinner is waiting for him (because he has an awesome mom, obv).

This was the first time these kids had heard about the wild things, and they were hanging on every word. They thought Max was cool, and felt bad for him when his mother sent him to bed, and geeked out over the first picture of the wild things. At first, they were way scared of them; when I asked them if they would be friends with the wild things, they screamed NO! and said they were big and hairy and looked weird. But by the time we got to the wild rumpus, they decided the wild things were alright after all. We even had a wild rumpus of our own (and I decided the world would probably be a better place if grown-ups had these once in a while too). And then something special happened-- as I was reading the part where Max decides to go home, the kids got kind of sad; they told me that Max should have stayed with the wild things forever. 

"But I thought the wild things were big and hairy and looked weird?"

Without skipping a beat, one little guy jumped in and said, "So what if they looked weird? They were really cool!"

Part of me wanted to save that moment and bottle it up. How often do we forget that stuff? You can preach to kids about bullying and "character counts" until you're blue in the face-- at the end of the day, those are lessons they have to learn on their own. Let's face it-- there are 85-year-olds who still haven't figured it out.

Ten years from now, when these kids are evil teenagers, I hope they remember this. When they're picking teams in gym class, deciding who to ask to prom... I hope they think about the wild things, and remember that it's the inside that counts. And when they forget? I hope there's a five-year-old around to remind them.