Were he still alive, March 2 would have been Theodor (Dr. Seuss) Geisel’s 109th birthday! I was rummaging through the bookshelves looking for a few of our favorite Dr. Seuss books when I realized that we had lost our copy of The Thinks You Can Think. While not my personal favorite (I’m partial to There’s a Wocket in my Pocket) I couldn’t help but laugh at myself as I remembered my daughter’s obsessive phase where she would insist on the exact same book for a bedtime story every night for months on end until I got bored to tears reading the same words over and over. The Thinks You Can Think was one of them.
Like many parents, by the end of the day I was (am) done with dealing with recalcitrant toddlers & preschoolers. D-O-N-E! Rather than slow down and enjoy bedtime I would often find ways to rush through it. In some ways this ended up being a good thing because our bedtime routine now is practically nonexistent but in retrospect it’s also sad because reading together is such a sweet time.
However I rushed. And one sneaky way I rushed was by skipping pages and words in our books. But my little girl is nobody’s fool who knew when I skipped a word or missed a page and called me on it every single time. So I had to get really cagey. I started skipping the exact same words or exact same page. I could read The Thinks You Can Think in half the time because I always skipped the page with the Snuvs and their gloves but never passed over Katie O’Sullivan Kraus in her big balloon swimming pool over her house.
Dr. Seuss wasn’t the only victim of my skimming. During the “Year of Obsession with Trains” I read The Little Engine That Could incessantly. Couldn’t get away with skipping pages there but whole sentences were casually omitted. Two different Thomas books were callously condensed too.
But tonight at bedtime, the kids and I will get together on the couch and catch up on some old favorites. And I won’t skimp out on a single word.
