Building character…

That night, Roselupin looked good and hard at the golden box with her name on it…

Then she went over to the box, took out all of the balls of red wool she could find…

and began to knit…

She knitted and knitted the whole night through…

And when she had finished, Roselupin put on her new red wolf suit and said:

If the world’s too wild for the likes of me,

Then a BIG RED WOLF I’d rather be…

No sooner were the words out of Roselupin’s new red wolfy mouth…

than she began to grow…

— in The Red Wolf by Margaret Shannon

On Friday I was walking back to school from the swimming pool with Little Gem’s class…

She and I were snacking on some grass-fed bison jerky…

A trio of boys behind us were fascinated by what we were eating…

Usually they tell Little Gem that her lunch is gross,

so she makes me make it all very plain,

with no sauce,

for the purposes of comment reduction…

I asked her if she was worried about eating jerky in front of her classmates…

She grinned at me as she ripped at the meat with her incisors…

No way Jose…

This is way too delicious…

I heard another mother trying to explain jerky,

to the boys,

in french…

She kept talking about beef…

I turned around and said,

This is buffalo…

Do you want to try it???

All hands were out…

The mom asked me,

Did you make this yourself???

When I said yes she told the boys,

This is very special…

I told them that it has powers…

They said they could feel it,

and they wanted more…

The mom said,

You should send some of this to The Canucks…

It might help them on their journey…

I told the boys,

If the Canucks win the Stanley Cup then you’ll know that I’ve sent them my secret recipe…

Little Gem told me later,

The boys don’t think you’re weird anymore…

Now they think you’re cool…

I heard Lucas say,

This is the best thing that I have ever eaten in my whole life!!!

I heard the boys speculating on whether I’d hunted the buffalo myself,

with bow and arrow…

I turned to them and said,

Not this time…

And the thing is,

when you’re with children and you say things like that,

they don’t send for the paddy wagon,

twirl their finger by the side of their head,

or ask,

What are you talking about???

because they know…

The question that they do have is,

Are you coming again next week???

and

Will you please share some more of your buffalo???