Rehearsing A Story

Ashtabula Ohio is three hours from our house, straight up the highway to Lake Erie. Yesterday, I was at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School with their kindergarteners through third graders. Nelson found a warm cozy spot back stage and fell asleep. I, on the other hand, was able to spend two hours with the students. During that time, I tried a new ending on an old story. I had thought the ending through in my head, but I had not practiced it in front of anyone. When I said the new words to the children, sitting on the gym floor in front of me, I felt the thread of the story go a little loose. I saw a shift in the posture of some of the children and wondered what they were hearing, and if the picture in their imagination had become muddy.

After the performance, we decided to spend that afternoon and night enjoying the lake. We ate dinner down in the historic district at a restaurant with white tablecloths and black napkins carefully folded into the water glasses. We walked in the night before for a drink, and I saw the Egyptian lentil dish on the menu. With that dish still in mind last night, I asked Josh, the waiter, if the lentil meal was popular.

“Two or three people have ordered it. I’ve never tried it, but the chef says it has an interesting mix of flavor, ” he said.

The dish turned out to have way too much rice with way too few lentils, topped with tomato sauce, for color I think. I ate it and as I did, I wanted the chef to come out and ask me for feedback. I really wanted to tell him how to make it better. I wondered if he practiced this new meal on anyone before he stuck it on the menu or if, just like me with my story, he saw it in his head and was pretty sure it would work.