Just the Facts, Kid. Just the Facts!

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My precocious, lovable daughter, A, is seven going on seventeen. If you think I'm verbose, you haven't yet met her. She talks a mile a minute, barely taking a breath, and I'm forever hiring a United Nations interpreter to translate her words into plain English. She is a lot like I was as a kid, but she's sociable and I was shy. I, however, also talked my mother's ear off, and came in every morning to tell her in great detail what my dreams were all about the night before. The difference between my daughter and I is that I think she makes up the dream descriptions as she goes along!

In any case, she, too, is very detail oriented. And aside from it being most evident in her conversations, it's very evident in her writing, as well.

Remember when you were in school, Jewish day school or otherwise, and you went back after summer vacation or spring vacation, and had to write the expected piece: "What I Did On My Holiday" -- she does it, too. She did it after summer break, did it after Chanukah break, did it after mid-winter break and now had to write what she did on her two-week Pesach vacation. She has a journal in her English studies, and after school breaks or after school trips, or around Jewish holidays, she is supposed to write in her journal and accompany her entry with drawings.

Yesterday I asked A if I could look at what she'd written in her journal about her Pesach holidays. She gave me permission, and before I began to read the particular assigned entry, I looked back at a couple of earlier entries. I was pleased when the teacher commented on one: "Are you going to be a writer like your mom?"

I then turned to read the Pesach entry. It was pretty much a play-by-play listing of the first days of the chag and who was at the seders we attended and hosted, and who she played with and what she played (Trivial Pursuit for Kids -- I recommend it highly. It's meant for age eight and up, but even my five-year-old can get answers right. It is multiple-choice answers)when it wasn't the seders. And which cousins and friends got to sleep over. And her closing sentence for the entry was: "And on Monday at 2:00 a.m. I barfed."

The hysterical laughter just erupted from me. She definitely had ended her piece on an "upbeat" note, in her matter-of-fact way. Yup, yup, yup, that's my daughter, folks. Giving her all to tell a story, and as Walter Cronkite would have said, "And that's the way it was!"