Two Different Ways to Write About Bananas

I've been having my son do a "morning page" in his writing book each day. The idea is that you put the pencil to the paper, and keep writing until the end of the page. No rules, no standards, just write. The idea, I explain to him, is it's kind of like taking a morning dump, literally. You've just gotta get the *stuff* out of your head, and once you do that, some of the better stuff has more of a chance to get out. Besides, it's good practice to do a little bit of writing every day, not to mention without any pressure for it to be "good."

Amusingly, I've discovered this is a *great* way to "teach" poetry. Wiley has written several "poems," with excessive, but very creative, use of white space in order to take up the whole page with the minimum amount of effort.

On another page, he's listed the ten avatars of Vishnu. That took up half a page.

Today, I got off my duff and told him I'd do my own while he did his. Turns out we both wrote about how there were seven bananas on the counter, at about the same moment--a wonderful moment of communion. It was interesting to note that we both said the same thing, but the slightly different words made it sound different:

"We have seven bananas on the counter. I like bananas!"

"There are a lot of bananas on the counter. Seven bananas."