Whenever I'm speaking to groups of students, either high school or college, I get usually get overwhelmed with a sense of how old I am, how fast the years go by and how much things have changed since I was sitting where they are.
Of course, I usually manage to date myself in the process.
One thing I am always preaching to them - especially for kids who show an interest in writing or journalism - is that I don't know of a single person who can write a lick who was not also something else.
That would be a voracious reader.
I try to show how tech-savvy I am when I explain to them that reading is like your email inbox, where you take in and process all that information. The outbox is writing, when you take that information, and work it into your daily vocabulary and writing.
I also offer another image to them, and this is where the dinosaur in me comes to the fore.
I ask them - actually I beg them - to please tell me they know what a Slinky is.
Sometimes a few hands go up. Sometimes they just look at me with those blank stares.
Of course, a Slinky is one of the great toys of all time. The coiled wires delighted us as kids. Tell me you did not marvel at the way a Slinky could actually 'walk' down the stairs.
I tell the kids to imagine they are holding a Slinky in their hands. Of course, we allow the coils to move back and forth, from one hand to the other.
Again I stress to them how that is akin to reading in the one hand, consuming all that information, then allowing it flow out the other hand with their writing.
Yeah, some of the kids' eyes start to roll back in their heads as well.
Well, today is the Slinky's day.
It's National Slinky Day.
Hard to believe that things that managed to enchant us back in the day.
I have to try to work Play-Doh into my next talk.
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