Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind by Phillip Done Read Free Book Online Page A

drag it down your paper in a straight line.” I slid my finger down the board. They did the same. “Pretend
     there is an imaginary dotted line here.” I drew a thick dotted line so they would understand what I meant. I tapped the bottom
     of it. “This is where you write
Sincerely
or
Best Regards
or
Love.
Since you’re writing to your parents, you should write
Love.
”
    “Ewww!” David shouted.
    I gave him a look then wrote
Love.
“Now you make your third comma.” I drew another giant comma. This one was even bigger than the last. Laughter swept the room.
     “Finally, you sign your name under
Love
— indenting it just a little — and you’re all done.” To finish it off, I signed Trevor’s name. More titters. Trevor’s face
     lit up.
    THIRD-GRADE FACT: Whenever you use a child’s name in an example, he will beam.
    After I reviewed where to put the commas and where to make the indent one last time, the children began writing their own
     letters. When they were finished, several lined up at my desk for me to check what they had written.
    Gina was first. She indented in the correct place but also indented every line after that.
    I rubbed my forehead. “Gina, next time you only need one indent, okay?”
    “Okay.” She handed it in.
    Dylan was next. He signed his letter
Love From Your Favorite Son.
    Smiling, I turned to him. “What will your brothers say about this?”
    He giggled then played with the stapler on my desk as I read more.
    “Dylan, how many commas in a letter?”
    “Three.”
    “Good. But I don’t see any in yours.”
    He leaned over his paper and stared at it. “Oh yeah.” He snatched it back and ran off to fix it.
    David was third in line. My lips scrunched into a pucker when I started reading. He had only written
Welcome to Back to School Night!
    “Uh… what happened to writing at least half a page?”
    “It
is
!” He pointed to the words
Love, David
in the center of the paper. “See!” Between
Welcome to Back to School Night
and his signature, there were six inches of blank space. I gave it back.
    Sarah stepped up and set her letter on my desk. I smiled when I saw it. A thick dotted line ran from the date to the closing.
     In her margins, she had drawn pixies and butterflies.
    “Honey, your letter is beautiful, but this dotted line is supposed to be
imaginary,
not real.”
    “Ohhhh!”
    She picked up the paper and skipped back to her desk. A couple of minutes later she returned and handed it to me. The dotted
     line had been transformed into a giant beanstalk. Fairies hid in the leaves. More butterflies and pixies flew all around it.
    “Well, honey,” I said, fighting back a laugh, “that’s the best imaginary dotted line I have
ever
seen.”

CURSIVE
    A pparently, fewer and fewer people are using cursive these days. On a recent SAT exam, only 15 percent of teens used cursive.
     The rest wrote in block letters. Could this mean that handwriting may someday end up the way of filmstrip projectors, record
     players, and hairnets on the cafeteria ladies? I hope not.
    If my school got rid of cursive, I’d have to start going to the gym. Teaching handwriting is my daily workout. I get my stretching
     in by forming giant loops and curlicues in the air. I lean to the right like Jack LaLanne so my kids will slant their letters.
     I work up a good sweat racing around to each desk turning pieces of newsprint at an angle, correcting pencil grips, checking
     that feet are on the floor, and making sure that their lowercase’s go all the way up to the dotted line and only have three bumps. Not seven.
    For children, learning cursive is right up there with trick-or-treating, getting a new hamster, or writing “Clean Me!” on
     the teacher’s car. They love it. Kids’ first handwriting lessons are like losing the first tooth, taking off the training
     wheels, or getting bedtime extended half an hour. It’s a rite of passage from being a little kid to a big one. Few things
     make