Kindergarten Jitters

As the first day of school looms in the very near future, Madeleine has been airing both her excitement and her concerns.  This evening at bedtime we talked about it a bit.

ME: Are you still feeling nervous about kindergarten?
MADELEINE: A little.
ME: What are you feeling nervous about?
MADELEINE: I'm just afraid that I'm gonna let you down.
ME: You mean that you might not follow the rules or that you might cry and have a melt-down?
MADELEINE: Yeah.
ME: Well, honey, don't worry.  Even if you do have a day where you're not on your best behavior, as long as you try your VERY hardest every day, I'm going to be proud of you.  Besides, sometimes you might not start out doing your best listening, but then you're able to work hard at getting better at it.  Remember in swim lessons how you had to work really hard on paying attention during your lessons?  Once we talked about that, you got a LOT better about listening to your teacher.
MADELEINE: Yeah.  And Mama.  Only a FEW times did I forget to remember about paying attention and forget to remember what STROKE we were doing. 
ME: I know.  You really did a great job.  I was proud of you.
MADELEINE: Yeah.  But only SOMETIMES would I just be FORGETTING.  Mama?  Why is "forgetting" called "forgetting?"
ME: I don't know.  I don't really know where that word comes from.
MADELEINE: And Mama?  Words aren't even WORDS.
ME: You're right.  Because they had to all be made up at some point.
MADELEINE: Yeah.  Because somebody had to make them up, because...otherwise...nobody would know how to TALK.
ME: Right.
MADELEINE: And Mama?  Sometimes I think of all the way back to when WORDS were being made, and, like, two boys were TALKING to each other, and the boy on the left kept saying to the boy on the right, "What are you even SAYING?" because the boy on the right was saying WORDS that he was just making UP, and after a long time, the boy on the right started saying, "No, what are YOU even saying?" because he started thinking that the boy on the left was being really ANNOYING.
ME: Um.  Okay.  So the boy on the right started saying "What are you saying?"
MADELEINE: Yeah. And Mama.  THEN I think I made him say, "With all this talking, we're barely even getting the job done!"
ME: And what did the boy on the right say to that?
MADELEINE: No.  Mama.  I was just TALKING the one on the right.  He was saying "With all this talking we're barely getting the job done" because they were supposed to be making up WORDS.


Ooookay.  That took a TOTALLY different turn from what I was expecting as we discussed the impending kindergarten year.  I'm glad I wasn't one of those two boys who were stuck with the task of making up the very first spoken words.  I don't think I'd want to bear that heavy a load of responsibility.  Thank goodness Madeleine doesn't have to worry about doing anything like THAT at kindergarten.  Put in perspective, asking her to try to be a good listener and to not have sobbing melt-downs about trivial stuff seems like a piece of cake!