Activity Next Door

When there is something going on on the block, like city workers filling a pothole, or fixing the sprinkler heads in the schoolyard lawn, I like to add a running commentary on the action. I sit in the doorway or on the end table by the window,* and woof quietly but regularly as the workers go about their jobs. I have been doing this all day, as landscapers are working next door.

I, Poppy, am what trainers of human young call an "active reader." Though I am not actually reading (see my profile if you want to know how I feel about books), I am participating in the story unfolding before me. As the people outside go about their business, I am using in higher level thinking strategies to understand their actions, how they relate to each other, and what they have to do with me. At my mommy's school, such thought is labeled, respectively, literal, interpretive, and evaluative thinking. For example, on the literal level, I am thinking, "There are men working outside!" On an interpretive level, I am watching what the men are doing with each other -- how the text relates to itself. On an evaluative level, I am waiting for it to have something to do with me. Will the men come over and give me treats? Will they cross the property line and thus make me bark at them? Each little, gentle woof is an annotation in the margin.

*Mommy does not like this, but I am so engrossed in what I am doing that I don't pay attention to her, even when she comes and physically removes me.