Kittens, Clowns and Cash

Put a gold star next to this morning – probably my favorite day on the job thus far, and certainly the most entertaining.

The student I tutored finished his work after roughly forty-five minutes of our allotted hour. At that point, he saw my Kindle and asked whether it had Internet capabilities. I told him it had limited online capabilities, but I couldn’t go to YouTube and watch juggling cats or anything. Then he wanted to know whether I meant that the cats were doing the juggling, or being juggled. It was a fair question. Realizing that we still had fifteen minutes remaining in our session and he was out of work to do, I told him to write a story about cats, juggling cats. He did not disappoint:

A long time ago, there was a family of clowns. They had a pet cat. One day, the cat got pregnant and had three little kittens. Every night the cat and her babies watched the circus. Their favorite part was when Clearance juggled bowling pins that were on fire. The cat got to thinking, “Hey, I can do that.” She took her babies and started practicing. She got good. Soon she became a part of the show, throwing her babies up in the air and catching them. The end.

That, I thought, was a solid fifteen minutes’ work! Just to make sure, I asked whether the kittens were set on fire. He confirmed that they weren’t.

After the hour was up, a different student broke out his guitar. Much to my surprise, the guitar-wielding student started playing “Fulsom Prison Blues,” and my story-writing student filled in the vocals – not bad, I might add!

Fortunately, no one set kittens on fire... you know, just to watch them fry.