Flat N

I am so glad I still have someone little at home. This small little body, with small little legs and hands. It does something for ones soul to be around someone who is still fresh. Where giggles and belly laughs are commonplace, hugs and kisses easily dispensed and a mind relatively free of the inner critic that tends to take up residence in older minds.
I have the privilege of being N's classroom teacher this year, I was nervous, but I had nothing to worry about, she's nothing like she is at home...she's an angel and works so neatly in her books. Is this really my child? I'm so proud of her. It has been a mutual experience, she's looked at me and wondered the same. Is this my mom? I may be earning some coolio points here to be saved up for when I go into real coolio point debt during the teenage years.
We have just finished the book, "Flat Stanley" together as a class. It's a story about Stanley who gets flattened by a bulletin board. What ensues is a series of adventures made possible by Stanley's flatness. He posts himself to a friend in another state, becomes a kite and even solves a crime. He makes being flat seem like such fun.
For the last two days I have walked into my room to find a pair of small feet sticking out from under my standing full length mirror. I recognized it immediately, the Flat Stanley flattening procedure. I merely inquired how it was going. The muffled reply came from under the mirror, " I don't think it is working yet..."
I wondered how many of my other charges were spending their weekend under bulletin boards, bookshelves and other flattening implements. Had I not been the teacher I would not have understood what was happening, I may even be alarmed.
I'm enjoying every moment of my time with this free spirit, until the time comes  when I look at her and wonder where she went. I recognize that at one time we were all free too, before all the pressures of life molded us into an automated cuboid. I think  it is really time to find the little girl in me again, I'll start by lying under the mirror with N, just to see how it feels...