I get to follow Cait and Wilson the Pumpkin? Now, not to be cliché, but that’s a tough act to follow. I love the whole idea of traveling with a pumpkin. I wish I had thought of it. But, alas, I did not, so I will have to come up with my own topic for today’s blog.

I have a Monday deadline, and I’ll be working right up to it, so of course, everything I thought of blogging about ended after the first paragraph. And then I thought about Cait saying that some of her friends didn’t understand Wilson, and that got me thinking of the things we have in our own lives that we understand, but other people do not. Part of it is the “you had to be there” syndrome. When Cait described how Wilson came to be Wilson, it made perfect sense. Without the explanaiton, well...lady driving around with a pumpkin in a bread bowl...:) Another part is point of reference. If a person doesn't have similar experiences to reference, then again, some things do not make sense.

For instance, people who have not parented probably wouldn’t understand driving a half hour back through traffic to pick up the special bear that your three year old daughter left at the restaurant. They might say something insane like, “Buy a new bear, “ not understanding that only that bear comforts your daughter at night.

People who haven’t taught school might think that a teacher simply teaches. Professors of education appear to believe this, since they never seem to mention the big “D”, discipline, in their lectures. They discuss many methods that may be used to convey various concepts, but rarely seem to clue future teachers in to the fact that their first job is crowd control. If a teacher cannot control his/her class, they aren’t going to be imparting much knowledge.

Let’s see...what else. Every niche in life has its secrets, things that have to be experienced to understand. Although, some are once understood and then eventually lost in the jumble of one’s mind. I am once again mystified as to why I couldn’t doze on the sofa while my child snuggled with me and watched Dumbo’s Circus when she insisted on getting up at 5 a.m. every single day! I seem to remember not a lot of dozing and only intermittent snuggling and being real tired all the time.

It’s our jobs as writers to make people understand these things—to give them the point of reference, to make them feel they were there, instead of “had to be there.” This can be tricky, because we haven’t experienced a lot of things we’re writing about, and there are always people out there in the reading audience who have. It’s a matter of doing research, as Karen and Tawny testified to earlier this week, and putting ourselves in other shoes, imagining how it feels to go on a frantic search and rescue mission for a tattered bear, to try to keep thirty students on task, or to walk around sleep deprived because of that wonderful state known as parenthood.

And now, I'm going to go put on those other shoes and walk a few miles. In a few minutes, I’ll be a thirty three year old ex-con who’s lost his livelihood in a wildfire. By Monday morning, I should be me again. See you then.