Lyceum

      When I was a kid, the school participated in a service provided by I don’t know whom, probably some government agency.  It was called the National Assembly program or some such name.

     When I went to Kansas to teach, they had a similar program they called “Lyceum”.  Both programs were designed to bring some culture and other world experience to us country bumpkins, I think.  I always welcomed the break from routine.  Truthfully, though, some of the programs we witnessed were less than entertaining.

      I am thinking of a small group of actresses who put on a Shakespeare play with a twist.  They were portraying Nazi soldiers during World War II who were putting on one of Shakespeare’s plays for their own entertainment while avoiding problems with their superiors.  The old auditorium had poor acoustics, which combined with Shakespeare’s original language and the switching back and forth between World War II and the Globe Theatre made the play very difficult to understand.

      Complicating matters, the program didn’t get started until late in the afternoon.  It wasn’t finished when the bell released rural students to catch their buses.  Five minutes later, the athletes made their escape to go to their practice.  By the time the closing curtain fell, there were very few in  the audience.

     But there were the very good programs, too.  Some benevolent agency sent us a storyteller once.  She spent two days in our system, one day with the grade schoolers and one day at the high school.  My girls were in grade school and I was teaching high school, so we all got a good dose of the storyteller.

     I had reason to recall her visit this past weekend.  The storyteller called her story “Two Rivers.”  It was her goal to involve every student in one of her stories.  She asked for volunteers to help her tell this story.  She selected four and in a whispered huddle gave them their instructions.

    The storyteller acted as the host of a roadside camp.  She had prepared an imaginary pot of stew.  Student one walked into the camp.  The host invited her to join her in some stew.  The girl asked, as instructed, “Are the dishes clean?”   The host answered, “As clean as two rivers can get them.”  Student one enjoyed a bowl of imaginary stew and exited.

     Actor two walked on and the conversation was repeated, “Are the dishes clean?”  “As clean as two rivers can get them.”  Actor two repeated the pantomimed dining scene and exited.  Actor three followed in the footsteps of one and two. 

     As actor three left the stage, the storyteller picked up the imaginary dirty dishes, looked at them, then whistled and called, “Here, Two Rivers!”  In pranced student four, a big guy with an always happy face doing his best impression of a joyously tail-wagging dog.  He commenced to “lick” the imaginary dishes that the storyteller held out to him.

     “Yup!  As clean as Two Rivers can get them,” concluded the storyteller, to much laughter, and a few groans.

      This past weekend, our world’s greatest grandson visited us.  He lacks two months of being two years old.  On Sunday morning, after a good going over with a wash rag, and when the scrambled egg crumbs were brushed from his sweat pants, upon release from the high chair, he immediately set off for the broom closet.  Not many doors he can’t open now.  He got out the broom and flailed the floor in his version of cleaning up.  It was pretty exciting for a minute or two, trying to keep chairs and self out of the unpredictable broom handle’s gyrations.

     His nap lasted into the Broncos game.  He wasn’t much interested in the beef stew we had lunched on.  Orange, apple, cookie beckoned.  The decree came down from above that he needed to eat something of substance before indulging in sweeter treats.  The siren song of fruit or sweet wasn’t strong enough to entice him to indulge in the stew.  He fasted for a while.

     During the second half of the football game, someone mentioned “popcorn.”  “Popcorn!  Yow, yow!  Popcorn!”

     “You have to eat your stew first.”

     Enough of the stew was gone in about five minutes to qualify as having eaten it.  When the first batch of popcorn hit the big red metal bowl, grandson went to the island counter, opened the door and got out his bowl.  For the next 30 minutes, popcorn went from the big bowl to his bowl, then to our bowls, back to his.  He ate a lot of it.

     When all the bowls were empty, the floor between couch and chairs and television had failed to dispose of its share of the second half treat.  Better get the dog to clean up.

     To the stairway went grandson.  “Bella!” he yelled.  The dog dutifully responded and the floor was soon clean.  Grandson decided what was a good way of cleaning the floor was a good way to do the dishes.  He put his bowl on the floor in front of the dog. Bella obliged.

     “Clean!” he said, after picking up the bowl and inspecting it.  Back to the island counter he went, opened the door and put the dish in its rightful place.

     Someone said, “As clean as Two Rivers can get it.”  We laughed.

     After grandson left, the Goodwife remembered to put the clean bowl into the dishwasher.  After he left.  No sense in discouraging the good habits of cleanliness and tidiness with a confusing lecture on the difference between a dog’s tongue and a dishwasher.