In one of the classes that I teach (acting) I used to have the students participate in an exercise I call the “highlighter game.” It was meant teach the students something about specificity, imagination, and simplicity regarding objects. One by one each of the students would draw an attribute from a hat filled with small pieces of paper and imbue the highlighter with that attribute from point A to point B. Simple. I’ve kept that relatively unused highlighter ever since as a simple reminder of how simple learning can be with the right idea. Earlier this week, however, something happened to that highlighter.
I was sitting in a position identical to the one I hold now: sitting in my chair at my desk with my hands on the keyboard. My son was walking around the room playing with loose papers, his bouncy ball, or anything else he could find. All was going well. To be honest I was quite thrilled to be able to be getting some work done during the day. Soon enough my curiousity would get the best of me. Silence is never the best thing regarding a child and my son’s silence was deafening to my ears as the sound of typing was louder than the sound of footsteps. That’s when I looked down.
Beneath my field of vision, little more than three feet away, my son sat happily on the floor sucking on the uncapped end of the highlighter. The confusion on my face was quickly replaced by horror. I flew from my chair, pulled the highlighter from his mouth, picked him up off of the floor and returned to my seat. A quick look at his mouth, hands and legs revealed that he had first drawn on himself before trying to eat the highlighter. Then I looked at the highlighter: it was white. It’s original and vibrant pink hue was a perfect white. Again: horror. What was I to do.
Luckily the highlighter was marked as non-toxic. Luckily my internet connection could quickly inform me of that. Luckily I didn’t have to worry. Luckily… I started to laugh. I washed him off as much as I could before Mom got home. I’ve learned my lesson. Silence is not golden: it’s a quickly fading hue of pink.