More student telepathy

Many times now (see "More whiteboard telepathy!" and follow the links), I have had the experience of one of my young students -- always young children, and different ones every time -- writing, drawing, or saying something that seems to have been pulled directly from my own mind, something so specific and bizarre that chance seems to be ruled out as an explanation.

This one is not quite so specific as some of the others, but I though it was worth noting. This is from a highly intelligent nine-year-old I tutor in English. Not quite a child prodigy, but definitely what is called "gifted and talented" (though fortunately her parents, like my own, have been smart enough to keep her far away from those sinister "gifted and talented" programs). Basically, she reads a dozen or so English books every week, and then we talk about them.

For those who came in late, the background is that I have spent several weeks reading a book about owls, which brought with it a large volume of owl-related synchronicities. I have not discussed the book, or owls, with anyone except on my blog, which none of my students read or even know about. I read the book of Kindle, so there's no chance anyone could have seen the cover or anything.

Yesterday, July 30, we were talking about the border between the United States and Mexico, and she said, "I guess if people want to smuggle drugs from Colombia into the United States, they probably try to sneak across that border at night. It's probably pretty hard to guard the whole thing, especially after dark." I said that that stood to reason, and then she joked, "Soooo . . . the border patrol needs to invest in some trained owls!"

Later in the same tutoring session, the conversation had turned to the French and Indian War and how the British victory, and the need to pay for soldiers to garrison their newly annexed territory, had led the king to raise taxes, setting in motion the chain of events that led to the American Revolution. My student said, "So obviously in a situation like that, you're going to need a lot more soldiers -- and owls!"

Unlike the previous reference, this made no sense even as a joke. "Owls?" I said. "Why would they need owls?"

"Well, they could work as alarm clocks to wake up the soldiers, and they could also scare the enemy by hooting."

Owls hoot at night, when people are sleeping, not in the morning, when they want to wake up, so they wouldn't make very effective alarm clocks. However, in The Messengers, Clelland refers four times to owls metaphorically "playing the role of an alarm clock."