Today Orca welcomed some distinguished guests to celebrate Earth Day. Matt Hill and Stephanie Tate are finishing up an 11,000 mile run through Canada and the U.S., "inspiring environmental action, one step at a time." On Monday Simon presented us with a checklist of environmental actions we were supposed to commit to: eating local & organic, turning out the lights, using cloth shopping bags, etc. This morning he had to turn it in with our signatures, in preparation for the big all-school assembly.We have to admire the way the environmental movement has figured out how to enlist small children as its ambassadors. Very few things can inspire exhausted parents to do the right-but-inconvenient thing like looking into the eyes of the people who are going to have to deal with the mess we're making of the planet. We remember guilting our own parents into not flushing the toilets during the Southern California drought; now it seems it's our turn. Fair enough. We'll bring our own water bottle.
So when we picked Simon up today we were prepared for a certain amount of environmental zeal, but not for the sleeve-yanking, hiss-whispering, jumping-up-and-down excitement our boy was exhibiting.
"Guess who I met!" he demanded.
"Who?" we asked.
"Raphael!" he hissed.
"Raphael?" We were a bit nonplussed, having spent much of the day deep in the women's suffrage movement.
"Yes! The guy who came to talk today -- he did the voice of Raphael in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies! That's his van over there -- look, it's HIM!"
So we all went over to shake the hand of a ninja turtle. Matt cheerfully did his Raphael voice for us, and told us what it was like to wear the funny suit, and seemed genuinely tickled that Simon was so thrilled to be talking to him. We came away with this, which may well inspire more composting and turning off of lights and than all 11,000 miles Matt Hill has run:
1 comment:
This made me incredibly happy.
Post a Comment