This week’s visit was very different from last week’s but I still really enjoyed it. This week we got to talk with the kids as a whole group instead of the kids being separated by gender. There were about 8-10 kids there, and we were in a gym area. We got to make a large circle with our chairs and talk all together. I really enjoyed this because it didn’t feel like we were presenting or just talking at the kids; instead, we were talking with them. I paired with two kids, one boy, and one girl. I noticed that the boy had velcro shoes, which was interesting because, in different facilities shoes with velcro are reserved for kids who can’t have shoe laces for their own safety or the safety of others.
As I was talking to my group partners about where they wanted to be in 5-10 years, the boy said he wanted to play in the NFL like his cousin, and the girl said that she wanted to become a defense attorney. She explained that she wanted to be a defense attorney because the one working on her current case is overworked and isn’t doing a great job defending her. I thought that it was very sweet and interesting that she wanted to help someone like herself later in life.
My group was more on the quiet side and gave short responses to the questions I asked. Eventually, I asked each of them what superpower they wanted if they could choose one. They both said that they would want the power to read minds. I asked them to elaborate and they talked about how it would help them know who was lying to them and it would teach them not to trust people. This was sad to me because they both expressed a deep distrust for the people around them, but with their backgrounds and a few personal things they shared, this made complete sense. The boy also started to explain to me how much I reminded him of his sister who had passed, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. All in a;; it was a great visit and as usual we ended it with a fist bump. Both kids said that if they were still at the facility next Tuesday they would love to participate in the story telling visit again.