I do run the zoo, don't I?

In case you don't have a child in elementary school, I will do you the favor of informing you that Dr Seuss's birthday was this week. Tuesday, in fact. I know because Kylie got to wear her pajamas to school and take along her favorite Dr Seuss book to share with the class. She wanted to take If I Ran the Zoo, but it had already been read, so she took And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street.
Every Wednesday I go to the school to help out for a little while in Kylie's 1st grade class. Normally I sit in the hall and help kids with reading. It's great and all, but a little boring after weeks and weeks, so I was glad to see that the class was already beginning a project when I arrived Wednesday. It seems that on Tuesday they had talked about what they each would do if they ran a zoo, and while I was there they were going to be writing papers on the very subject. My job was to keep one corner of the room on task and to help kids who needed it. It's harder than it sounds, I'll have you know, and I am reminded that I was not cut out for teaching small children to whom I didn't also give birth.
Okay, so fast forward a little. I'm going to skip the parts about having to confiscate toys and endlessly reminding little girls to keep working and spelling "Antarctica" for one child and "penguin" for another and confusing them both and giving up on one little girl who just wanted to play with a pipe cleaner. Yeah, I'm just leaving that for another time, maybe for something soapbox-y about how little these sweet (okay, not all of them are!) teachers are being paid to repeat themselves endlessly and have snot wiped on them. Anyway, I'm getting around to telling you about one of the papers I read.
Most of the papers went something like this:
If I ran the zoo, I wud (would) get some penguins from the oshin (ocean) and they wud swim all day and eat fish.

or (Kylie's)

If I ran the zoo, I would move to New Zealand and get lots of kiwi brids (birds) and snakes. The name of the zoo would be the MagZealand Zoo.

or

If I ran the zoo, I wud only git (get) sum (some) mermaids and put them in there (their) habitaps (habitat). And I wud git one dog and she wud be god (good).

But, there was one that stood out above all the others I read. And I tried so hard to recall her spelling, but for the life of me, I could not. It was that precious. It was written by a good friend of Kylie's, and it read:

If I ran the zoo, I would get a two-headed giraffe, and it would pop out babies.

Short and sweet. I loved it. Her handwriting was wonderful, and she had drawn a colorful and lovely picture. It looked like a spotted two-headed football, but it had a tail. And in between the football shape and the tail, babies were popping out, though it really looked like the football/giraffe was pooping.

Next time I don't get banished to the hallway, I'm going to make a list of all the funny things I overhear while I'm in the classroom.

You've got to love first grade!