By: Author Unknown
This is my favourite column of the year, one that readers mostly write: the wonderful insights and funny lines of children.
My best laugh of the year came from one of my young great nephews. And the joke was on me. We were all together at a family dinner and I had slipped out of my shoes.
Josh, age four, was staring at my feet. Finally he said, "What's wrong with your feet?"
I was wearing slacks and pantyhose, so he was staring at my toes covered in pantyhose sticking out of the slacks. Of course younger women today hardly ever wear pantyhose any more, let alone under slacks, so I wasn't too surprised at his question.
"Well, those are my stockings, my pantyhose."
His older brother, Gabriel, six, said somewhat embarrassedly, "Oh, I thought your toes were stuck together."
This laugh prompted my mom to tell the story she always tells. When I was little I came home from a Sunday school in which we had learned about scrolls and asked her, "Did you have scrolls in your day?" I think I actually remember this incident.
But even though I've heard this next one almost as many times, I most certainly do not remember it. I was out on the swing enjoying a snack I had fixed myself. I had put crackers in between two pieces of bread. Mom asked me what I was eating. I replied, "A cracker sandwich." My family, for some reason, thinks this is hilarious. I've never gotten the joke. I guess you "had to be there." (Never mind the safety of eating while swinging.)
Robert Epp, Henderson, Nebraska writes, "When our son Tim was four years old I took him along with me to the outlying pasture where I had some repair work to do on the windmill. I was busy crawling up and down the tower when Tim asked me, 'Dad, may I crawl up the windmill too?' I said, 'No, you can't.' He then asked 'Why not?' I said, 'Well Tim, you just aren't old enough yet.' He accepted that with unusual grace, I thought. About 20 minutes later I was gathering the tools preparing to return home when he asked again, 'May I climb the windmill now?' 'No,' I said, 'I told you you couldn't.' 'But dad,' he said, 'I'm older now!' Hard to argue against that kind of logic."
Robert tops off his story by saying, "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Tim is now an environmental lawyer in Washington, D.C."
Vinod, a reader originally from India (and I'm not sure if it his story or he got it from other sources) wrote, "A Sunday school teacher asked her children if anyone could quote the entire 23rd Psalm. A four-and-a-half-year old girl was among those who raised their hands. A bit skeptical, the teacher asked if she could really quote the entire psalm. The little girl came to the front of the room, faced the class, made a perky little bow, and said, "The Lord is my shepherd, that's all I want."
Amy Dueckman, Abbotsford, B.C., recalled that when she was enrolling her oldest son in kindergarten, as they walked to the school, he asked her what "enroll" meant. "I explained that it meant that we would leave his name in the school office so that they would know he was coming to kindergarten the next fall. He looked up at me with alarm. 'Don't leave my name there,' he pleaded. 'I need it!'"
Children frequently have novel or literal ways of looking at things. Let the children in your life remind you to try and look at things from another point of view, too.