One of the great things about young children is their ability to see the world through unvarnished eyes. They call ‘em like they see ‘em with no holding back.
Our eldest daughter was given a handmade card from her youngest saying how much she loved Mommy. Mommy told the little one that she was going to keep the card forever, to which an older sister said, “Wow. That’s nice. Usually you trash everything we make!”
It was a reminder to be careful of what treasures we dispose of and who’s watching when we dispose of them.
Their tendency toward the literal is equal parts surprising and funny.
Some of the grands were here for the evening when things got rambunctious and one of the girls tumbled off the sofa into the coffee table. Putting an ice pack on her bruised cheek and swollen eye, I said, “Looks like you’re going to have a black eye.”
“No!” she shot back. “My eye is brown!”
Another of the girls started kindergarten able to read well and spell words like chrysanthemum. She spelled chrysanthemum for our son when she was only four. He looked at me and said, “Is she right?”
She was. She’d learned a lot listening to her older sisters do their lessons. So, when she started kindergarten it wasn’t exactly challenging. She came home one day and her mother asked, “Did you learn anything in school today?”
She thought a bit, then said, “No, but I think the other kids did.”
Friends once drove 10 hours to visit their grandson’s school for Grandparents Day. In the kindergarten classroom they were celebrating the number 100. Questions had been posed and the students had written their answers.
Question: “What would you do with $100?”
Little boy’s answer: “Buy a motorcycle.”
Question: “What will you do when you are 100?”
Little boy: “I will brush my teeth, sleep and not ride my motorcycle.”
Children often have accurate and even wistful thoughts on aging.
One of our grands blew out the eight candles on her birthday cake and said, “Wow! I’m really getting old really fast!”
Aren’t we all?
Another little one was at the pool one day and announced, “I’m looking like Daddy. My legs are hairy.”
One of the boys, living in Chicago at the time, was working on his ABC flashcards, rolling along with, “A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O –” He paused before P then yelled, “Parking!” Living in the city, they are always looking for the red and white signs with P’s in search of parking.
You never know exactly how they see things.
I was putting on eyeliner one day, squinting in the mirror, when a little voice squealed, “You look like a pirate!” Three of them began making “grrr matey” faces in the mirror, when another little voice said, “You don’t look like a pirate, Grandma— you look like a queen.”
What’s not to love?