day 218: running with a desk over your head

Kazzy

day 218: running with a desk over your head

When my youngest, and gentlest, brother was going into the sixth grade, the brother just older than him warned him about Mr. Rinker.   

You'd better behave yourself or he will make you run around the track with a desk over your head.  He is really mean and nobody likes him.

At some point during Mr. Rinker's instruction he asked my brother a question, which was really not a very good idea.  Tony looked up at him and, remembering the warning from David, vomited all over his desk.  Nerves got the best of him as you might guess.  And as if there were some sort of digestive party line in action, the other two boys sitting near my brother then also vomited.  That poor custodian.

But the point is, how about that power of suggestion?  How about the way our minds can work us up to the point of making ourselves sick?  Or to the point of believing an untruth if it is told to us in just the right time and place?  A powerful thing, this suggestion.

I would like to think that the same can hold true of the power behind sincere praise.  Or the power behind encouragement.  I am hoping that the power of suggestion will work for one of my little princesses in my class.  I told her parents that she can do regular kindergarten with some help in resource, and with an occupational therapist.  They were shocked and got quite emotional about the whole thing.  And then I saw them buying it.  They were ready to let that power of suggestion lead them to a new way of thinking.  About something true.  Something hopeful.  Something entirely possible.  And there were no desks involved in the process, except for the one I get to sit behind while I speak to these great people.