Google is great

A while ago Princess came home from school and had a cloth bag about the size of a piece of paper and a laminated sheet that asked her to find an object beginning with the letter 'R' that would fit into the bag and return it to school the following day.

Initially, I was happy that it was 'r' and not 'q' or 'x' or something...but then as I got down to it with her to brainstorm objects that begin with the letter 'r' I drew a blank. Like a complete blank. So I Googled: "nouns that begin with 'r'". A lot came up. The harder part was then to find one that a) we had and b) would fit into the bag. Ultimately, we choose to ask Stinky to borrow one of his cars and call it a 'race-car'. Job well done. Thank you Mr. Google.

Laying in bed that night I was still irritated that I could not seem to come up with objects that began with the seemingly common letter 'r'. Princess was also pretty frustrated. Seeing this I recalled my own kindergarten experience with letter words. We had a work sheet. We had to think of words that started with all of the letters of the alphabet then write them. The letter I recall vividly is the letter 'n'. For the life of me I could not think of something that began with 'n'. I came up with 'knee' and 'knuckle'- both of which sadly begin with a silent 'k'. Silent letters seemed out to taunt me. I grew increasingly frustrated and wound up in tears on my teachers lap. It was one of the first times I was stressed about school...I was in kindergarten- arguably the least 'stressful' part of my educational career. It did not bode well for my future. Indeed I spent a large portion of my education very anxious. This event obviously made quite an impression on me because to this day I remember what I was wearing, the feeling of tears down my face, and the word that the boy next to me had (nest) and that he took my 'q' word and I was pretty angry with him for that.