The First Word

Twidgey decided that she watched the human long enough to know that squigly marks on paper made words that represented things, like apple or banana.  She watched the human many times writing lists on paper then going out with the list and coming back with food. 

Twidgy thought, "Maybe if I can get the human to know I want to learn she will show me how to understand the squigly lines".

 

Twidgy waited quite a few days, but then one day it happened!  The human was going to make a list and she was with her, what luck!  Twidgy wasted no time.  As soon as the human put her on the sink she ran over to the pen and paper and made the human notice that she was interested in what it did.

It worked!  The human noticed.  Now Twidgy new it was critical to really show the human something.  She decided she would put the pen into the human's hand so that she would get the message - the message being that she wanted to understand writing.

All of a sudden something wonderful happened.  The human went and got a banana and came back to Twidgy.  Then proceded to write squigly lines on the paper very slowly and precisely.  Then the human took the banana and placed it by the squigly lines and pointed at the word and then at the banana.

Twidgy understood. She figured out that the word for banana were those squigly lines "B a n a n a" meant banana.  What a wonderful thing!!! Twidgy was so excited that she twirled around and bounced up and down a few times.  She wondered if the human would teach her more.  She made sure to show her human that she understood. She ran from the word to the banana several times to show her that she knew what the squigly lines meant. Twidgy hoped it worked.   Maybe tomorrow she would learn new words.

That night when Twidgy went to sleep she thought about all the words that she may someday know and she thought to herself, "I am a very happy rat, I know my first word 'Banana'". She was smiling when she fell asleep.