Allow me to explain. I have two children, the eldest, a girl of nine and her younger brother, six years old. My son is fascinated with crime. He always wants to hear stories about stealing and the consequences. I’ve told him about Saudi Arabia, where they execute murders and amputate the right hands of thieves. His mother often reads him the weekly crime report of break ins and robberies, especially crimes gone awry. Recently I brought home an Encyclopedia Brown collection and they were both fascinated. Between the two of them they probably solve about 70-80% of the “crimes”, although it usually takes a second review of the clues. The Boy will read through one of these anthologies in an afternoon, and has also read the entire collection of Lemony Snicket’s Unfortunate Series of Events and can get through most levels on Warcraft III.
At night, every night, they ask for “stories in the dark”. This is in addition to any bedtime reading. I think this began when their mother would recount tales of her childhood, growing up in Thailand. Now it doesn’t matter what the story is, and after many years of this the well can tend to run dry, so we supplement with different things. Mrs. Shibb will look up interesting stories on line; I’ll just pick some random topic, possibly inspired by a query, and go from there. This weekend I read “Ender’s Game” for the first time, and so told them this story second hand, greatly simplified. At one point I had to explain that Russia and the USA used to be great enemies before they were born, as this is somewhat important to the plot. Since my children keep a paper of “Russian Hamsters”*, they are curious about all things Russian. So their bedtime story became a brief synopsis of Russian history, from the Tsars, through the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin and Stalin to the more recent Democratic revolution. I’ve also held their thrall by explaining to them comparative world religions, the US Electoral system, how genetics and DNA work, etc. Now these were not the sort of things I was told about when I was a child. Granted I was more likely to hear stories from my father of his quasi-adolescent escapades.
On Monday, when I arrived home from work, my two little darlings were creating a song. About their hamsters. I don’t recall exactly how it went, but it wasn’t much worse than anything Ashley Simpson might make up, and revolved around “Rockin’ Hamsters”. I overheard my daughter say to my son, “We need more ‘rockin’ in the song, that way we’ll make more money.” A while later they played a game where they were cheetahs trying to stop a poacher. The key to their success? The poacher, was apparently “lactose intolerant”, so they were going to find a way to get him doused with milk.
Sometimes my son insists on being called “Chocolate Thundah”. When he was much younger we wouldn’t allow him toy guns and so he invented his own. He didn’t know what the word was for guns, so he invented his own word, “tingers”. Because apparently when guns shoot on TV the ricocheting bullets make a sort of “ting” sound, at least to his ears.
I could go on quite a bit, but you get the idea. Are they standard issue children, or just a bit off center?
*I don’t know that there are any such creatures in “the wild”, but that’s what the petstore called them, IIRC.
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