Psst...

Passing notes is a long standing tradition.

 

I still have notes from high school passed between me and my friends. Top Secret. 007. For my eyes only.

 

I remember when my sister and I thought it would be great fun to take a Shakespeare class together in college. We had the worst professor in the history of earth teaching our class. He droned on and on and generally put us to sleep. To keep each other awake and to pass the seemingly interminable hour and a half, we passed notes back and forth instead of taking notes on the lectures.

 

Because the class was over an hour, we had a break half-way through. The professor got smart and finally started taking attendance after the break when he realized half the class wasn't returning. One day, just before the mid-point, Danae passed me a note asking if I planned to come back. My emphatic response was, "HELL NO!" We probably went to the cafeteria for a navajo taco instead of attending the second half of the class.  

 

For a long time, I saved printed church programs with notes scribbled between me and my roommates. Once when I was home from school, my sister and I were assigned to speak in church. While we waited for our turn, we passed notes back and forth. Just before I went up to speak, I was struck with the call of nature. I wrote to my sister, "I have to pee." We both started giggling (quietly) up on the stand in front of the entire congregation. I'm pretty sure it mortified my mother. I'm also pretty sure she forgot all about it, until this moment.

 

Now that my boy can write and is learning strategies for sounding out words, he is continuing the note-passing tradition. Last night after we played a card game and were watching a show before dinner, Nicco hid himself under a fort of pillows and blankets. He found a marker and a scrap of cardboard and slipped this note to me from under his hiding place:



 



I probably would have given in if he had already eaten. It was almost amusing enough for me to feed him ice cream for dinner.