Honestly, at our library, it is so much more than that. The children have show and tell, they sing songs with hand movements, there are puppets, stories, and at the end, they have a parade through the book shelves to the music room, where they play little instruments. Our Mother Goose is a radiant senior citizen who dresses up in crinolines and pinafores, and a flowered bonnet, and carries a goose. She has gorgeous silver hair that she wears bobbed, a thick Mississippi accent, and ever-present red lipstick. A veteran kindergarten teacher, she sings most of her words, she loves the kids and focuses a lot on manners. In fact, before the children can go in, the boys have to line up opposite the girls, hold out their hands, and ask, "Ladies, would you like to go in first?" To which the girls are supposed to reply "Yes, thank you," with a curtsy.
On Mother Goose Story Hour days, we focus heavily on having our hands and faces scrubbed clean, our hair combed neatly, teeth brushed to a polish, clothes clean and neat, and above everything else, I insist the boys wear their whitest socks. (They have to take their shoes off to sit on the story rug.) We practice "Yes, ma'am" and "Fine, thank you. How are you?" over and over during our drive into town.
As you can imagine, Luke typically uses story hour to make me look like a deadbeat. He never uses "Yes, ma'am" or "Fine thank you, how are you?" He mumbles during show and tell. One day, he was bent on interrupting Mother Goose every two seconds without raising his hand. The most embarrassing time was when Mother Goose read a poem about gum, and she made it pretty clear that she thought gum was disgusting. She went on and on and on about the noise, the germs, how gross it is to find it on the ground, etc. As soon as she was done, Luke blurted out, "MY MOMMY LIKES TO GIVE ME GUM!" The horror!
Yesterday, I got a break from being humiliated during story hour. I got to sit back in my seat while another mother was sold up the river. After Mother Goose handed out Safety Pops, another staple of Thursday mornings, she warned the kids not to open their "suckahs" in the library. "Did you know that last week, there was a little girl who opened hers in the library and started eating it? Mmm, MMM!" she huffed, "Can you believe that?"
"Yes, I can believe it," the woman she was looking at answered, "It was my child."
Mother Goose, being the perfect southern lady, was horrified that she had made such a gaffe. She turned beet red, and apologized and said she should have made the child in her story a boy. All eyes were on the mother of the greedy little rotten child who dares to open suckers in the library. I sat and smiled in my seat, pleased as punch that I had gotten to fly under the radar for a day.
Next week, Luke will surely think of some way to pay me back for the week that he was an angel. I'm anticipating a pants-wetting episode, or nose picking during show and tell.
So now are you totally jealous that your town doesn't have our Mother Goose? Well, you're in luck, because Mother Goose is on YouTube:
