Back in the suburbs around 1990, my mom showed up for the first parent/teacher conference of preschool. Surely she was expecting to hear how great I was at taking naps, how I was consistently hungry and how I sang all the time. She wasn’t expecting this Nora Ephron fantasy…

During a lull in recess, itching to make something happen, I had called a group of littles together… we were gonna put on a play!

I sat them down and told them Aesop’s classic fable of the fox and the crow - complete with voices and cartoonish faces. Then I doled out parts and proceeded to direct the damn thing. Turns out, monkey bars are a stellar stand-in for treetops and wood fiber mulch can basically serve as anything – at least for a four year old. After a few rounds of rehearsals, the rest of the kids gathered to watch. Ok yeah, maybe I fed lines to the stars but we had their attention!

The whole thing not only delighted my teacher and classmates, but stuck with my mom so much that she frequently references the story 30 years on as a thin-slice of who I am.

I’m Pebbles Russell and I love to tell stories and play with my voice!