I have a confession to make to all of my elementary school teachers: I can’t stand word finds. Granted, this is probably because I am so very terrible at them, but still: I loathe the little buggers. There’s just something about staring at a glut of letters and trying to find the “hidden words” that has always given me a headache, the same way I would get a headache when I was in Thailand and would catch myself trying to read the writing on signs as I walked down the street. (I think its the squiggly shape of the Thai alphabet that makes me think I can understand it if I only squint hard enough. Or sober up enough. Trust me, though: neither one works.)
Unfortunately, that same squinting/sobering technique is equally unsuccessful with word finds. Which is why I never pushed my kids to do them when they were in grade school. There are just some childhood memories that are still so painful to me that I swore I would protect my kids from them at all costs. Boiled spinach. Polyester dresses. Burt Reynolds. And, of course, word finds. Although, now that my children are older, I’m starting to rethink those earlier decisions.
The impetus for this “rethinking” came the other day, when I was trying to show Clementine the name and location of the hotel I had booked for her in Miami. I would be out of cell phone range when it came time for her to check into the hotel, and so I wanted to make sure she understood where she would be staying until the rest of the family joined her the next day. With this in mind I showed her the email confirmation, a piece of paper that, including the recipient information, salutation, and sign off, literally had less than fifty words written on it. Seven of those words were written in bold in the very middle of the page, and they were “You are staying at the Posh Hostel.”
Clementine took the paper from me, glanced at it, and then handed it back in disgust. “Just tell me where I’m staying.”
I pointed to the paper again. “It says it right there.”
Another glance. Another rejection. “No, it doesn’t.”
I looked at the paper, thinking that perhaps I had handed her the wrong one by mistake. Nope. “You are staying at the Posh Hostel,” it read. “Did you read this?” I asked.
“I didn’t have time to read it all the way through,” she replied. “Just tell me already.”
I blinked. Didn’t have time? She had spent the morning looking at cat pictures online. All morning. Suddenly I had some insight into all those word find assignments all those years ago. Perhaps this was why my teachers assigned so many of them. Perhaps they weren’t sadists who enjoyed watching children become frustrated, but rather kind, helpful souls who could anticipate that one day the world would become so complicated and distracting that the ability to tune out extra information and concentrate on gleaning the wheat from the chaff would be of the utmost importance. Maybe, even though we only had four TV channels at the time, they were predicting the day when information overload would make the ability to focus on one task not only helpful, but necessary for survival. Or at least necessary for finding out the name of your hotel.
Then again, maybe they were just trying to keep us distracted while they flipped through their Burt Reynolds edition of Playgirl. Either way, I wish I had saved a few of those word finds to share with my children. I have a feeling they’re going to be needing the practice.