Tell your sister I say "Hi!"

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted. -Garrison Keillor

There are a couple of questions I get just about daily. Sometimes from the same the kids.

One, as I've mentioned before, is whether I have kids of my own. Which is often followed by whether I'm married, and how old I am, which is then followed by the kids telling me how old their parents are. I'm never sure whether to believe them, especially when they're kindergardeners.

(Yesterday I had a kindergardener tell me he was getting bigger--he was up to his dad's nose! Well, I asked him if his father is taller than me (answer: yes) and then had him stand up. Nope, you're not even up to my chest, much less my nose. Pretty sure you're not up to your dad's nose honey. At least he seemed to get my logic.)

But here's the new one:
Back story: Kim, my seemingly-identical-but-actually-fraternal twin sister visited, and I had her come to the after school program to hand out snack with me, and then come in the next day and read with some first graders. And all the kids freaked out. Seriously, it was as if they had never seen twins before. (And they have--there's a pair of 5th grade boys at my school who are twins.)

Well, we got a lot of "which one's the real Miss Amy?" and some kids giving Kim some hugs that I'm pretty sure made her feel a bit awkward.

Now it's been well over a month and every single day I get a question along the lines of: "When's your sister coming back?" "Where's your sister?" "What's your sister's name?" A couple kids have told me to tell Kim they say Hi. Which I think weirds Kim out, because she doesn't remember them that well, much less their names, and they all want to see her again.

Sometimes kids say to other kids "Did you know she has a twin?" One 5th grader calls me "twin." A couple of kids have jokingly called me Miss Kim or been like, "You're not the real Miss Amy! You're her sister!"

I find the whole thing very entertaining. But it's also a testament to the fact that, even though I've been a part of these kids' lives for half of a year, I'm a big enough influence on their lives that they still remember and are curious about my sister who was a part of their world for only a few hours.