Vignette.

The classroom is dark, because it's naptime. I'm sitting at the teacher table, reading about a long journey down a rust-red trail on an ornery mustang. It's mostly quiet except for the rustling of the light sleepers and those who don't sleep at all. The wind blows the curtains open and lets in a bit of sunlight. The bathroom light clicks on, hovers like this for a moment, then clicks off again and plunges the room into darkness.

There's a little boy whose mat is in the corner. He's four years old, and he's probably the most restless of them all. He's always talking and standing and shifting and making noise. He never sleeps. He never stops. He doesn't know how to whisper. And today--at a fairly loud level of volume--he says something new from his spot in the corner:

"Sally, I want more music."

And, I'll be honest, I don't know what he is necessarily referring to.

But if I were at liberty to speak my mind, I would have said, "Damn straight."
I would have gone out in search of more music for him, and for me. And we would have listened to it together, because kids know better than adults what music is. And he could have told me what colors and lines he saw in the music, and he would have danced crazy while I watched and laughed awkwardly and told him not to hurt himself. And when I clocked off that evening and went home, I would have screamed my music in the car and gone on a pilgrimage to find as much music as possible and surrounded myself with it like a big blanket full of colors and lines.

But it was naptime. So I just said, "Shhhhh!"

-The GLS