If I haven’t told this story on the interent, it’s the only place which has been left out.
My brother had dug up a game he had as a child–each player gets 15 pegs numbered one through fifteen. The players take turns flipping over a peg, looking for the number one. When you find your number one, you place it in the proper location, and start looking for number two. And so on until you reach fifteen.
Well, my nieces played it. They were five and seven. The elder niece got very frustrated.
“Daddy, where’s the number one?”
“I don’t know [eldest]” (or alternately) “Someplace you haven’t looked yet”
“Daddy, where haven’t I looked yet?”
Meanwhile, Younger kept looking determinedly, and after she found the first peg, it wasn’t long before she had them all in order.
Next game, it was clear to all adults around that the lightbulb had gone off.
Younger niece was no longer picking pegs at random. Instead, she started at one corner, and went methodically down the line looking for her first peg.
She won that game in no time flat.
Third game, younger niece is offering to tell “the trick” to big sis–and big sis is having none of it. No, she’d rather swap colors, swap opponents, and do everything but stand on her head to avoid picking pegs capriciously, and wondering why she can’t find pegs reliably.