Bossy Little Girls:

 

My girlfriend, June, has been working very hard the past couple of weeks at her daughter's school, helping in the Holiday Shop.  The Holiday Shop is a PTA fundraiser set up during the holiday season to make it easy for the students to buy gifts for their families.  The parents send some money, with a list of who the kid is supposed to buy for. 


The Holiday Shop is quite a big deal at the school.  Last year, they had kids stealing the gifts from the gift table and taking them outside to play with at recess.  This year, they revised the way they were displaying items, with only one on the table.  These are wiser moms now, trying hard to outsmart little shoplifters while still maintaining a profit for the PTA.


Come to find out, this can be a challenge.  Some teachers boycott the Holiday Shop and don't send the announcements about it home, because they would rather just forgo Christmas all together as they teach in a public school.  Politics, religion, the mix of church and state ... it can get very complicated these days. 


One of June's jobs was to make out the gift tags.  The other day, a little girl, about 5 or 6, missing her front teeth, speaking with a cute little lisp and wearing a large pink turtleneck coming up to her chin, came in to shop.  She chose her gifts, and June asked her what her name was.  She said Misty.  Or at least that is what June thought she said.  So, Misty was written on the tag.  The little girl said, "You spelled that wrong."  My friend said, "Oh, I'm sorry, how do you spell your name?"  (My friend had found out the hard way during the past 2 weeks that you can actually spell Halie about 100 different ways, so she was ready for anything at this point.)


The little girl looked straight into my friend's eyes and said very firmly:  "I think you need to sound that out." 


June started laughing, and could not stop.

"Mistee"