Accept the compliments and you may wind up with your head on a stick

I’m a sucker for a compliment. Tell me I’m wonderful and I’ll hand over my wallet, credit cards and banking information. Maybe I’m insecure, maybe I’m just a big, dumb male. Whatever the case, I pant like a happy dachshund whenever someone tells me they like my work. If I had a tail, I’d wag it.

So when the letter from Collins Elementary School teacher Marnie TenCate arrived last week in my electronic in-box, I was immediately taken with her altogether accurate, 100 percent spot-on review of this column.

I have been using you for the past few years and you haven’t even known it! writes Ms TenCate. I teach second grade and clip your article just about every single week because you always have such fabulous writing with voice! I especially enjoy the lead, and so do my second graders.

Ms. TenCate goes on to say she uses my column as an example of good writing. My column! I know, I couldn’t believe it either. But she certainly had my attention.

Ms. TenCate adds she spends an hour each day writing with her students; a teacher after my own heart. You wouldn’t believe the stuff they come up with … or maybe you would, she writes.

I would indeed. Some of the most honest writing I’ve read has been penned by elementary school students. It’s only in later years we learn to water down our thoughts; to “soften,” to “spin.” We build little walls around our feelings and lose our ability to use words in an unashamedly truthful manner.

If Ms. TenCate and teachers like her can help stem that sad tide, I’m behind ‘em all the way.

But I try to stay waaaaaaaaay behind them. Away from the students.

Why? Because kids scare me. Don’t get me wrong, I love children … as individuals. Sometimes even in groups of two or three. But a whole classroom full of apple-cheeked, toe-headed, sneaker-footed second-graders? Yikes!

I’m not afraid they’re going to hurt me, exactly, like some angry Transylvanian mob storming Castle Frankenstein. I just don’t understand them. Looking out over a group of second-grade kids, I can’t tell if they’re thinking about the corn dogs they had for lunch, marbles, Barbie, Play Station II, or the possibility of reenacting a scene from “Lord of the Flies” with me playing the role of the decapitated pig.

So I snapped back to reality in a hurry when Ms. TenCate asked if I would visit the school and speak to her second-graders.

I was wondering if you would come in some day so they can meet you; a real published author! Ms. TenCate writes.

She then mentions – by way of sweetening the deal – that her husband works for Hershey and could probably set me up with some free chocolate. Ms. TenCate knows all my weaknesses, apparently, for she goes on to relate the fact that there are several cute, single teachers plying their trade at Collins Elementary School. I like teachers, and cute, single ones rank especially high on my “things of interest” list.

It has been a week now and I still haven’t responded to Ms. TenCate’s letter. I hate to disappoint a reader (since I have so few of them), but I’m chicken as all get-out about appearing before those kids.

What would I say? What if they ask me questions I can’t answer? What if they suddenly light torches and rush me, yelling, “Kill the pig! Kill the pig!” I’m not sure I can handle that kind of pressure.

But I’ll probably do it anyway. After all, Ms. TenCate called my writing “fabulous.” That doesn’t happen often.

Maybe I could just send her my credit cards and banking information.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.