Random 
2 Comments Other Peoples Kids
I am a frequent presence at a friend’s house, he has three kids. The youngest girl has a hard time keeping up with the other two. The other day they were playing with sticks, as swords and she had received the ‘short end of the stick’ wielding a small stick not more than 6″ long. The other two had nice long (and painstakingly blunted and sanded) sticks.
The kids were entertaining themselves, running around with a short stick with the others dashing from tree to tree striking each with a satisfying whack! The short stick gave a less than acceptable tap, at each tree and she was clearly distraught, and not having much fun.
In a fit of frustration she finally threw her little stick to the ground cursing it. I quickly scooped it up and asked why she had thrown such a special stick away? she scoffed at me and pointed out its obvious short falls, while storming off to sulk. I quickly grabbed a marker close by and adorned the stick with mathematical symbols, common to most adults, but mysterious and occult to children.
Once she had seen that her stick was, in fact, special, newly adorned in puzzling runes. she was eager to get it back, especially when I explained that is was now a magical wand, not just a short stick.
She could identify a couple of the symbols on her new wand, the obvious; plus and minus, multiplication, and division, but there were many more she had never seen before including,
The questions started pouring in!
and of course the other two soon came to me asking for runes on their larger sticks, I explained to them that big sticks were for hitting and smaller sticks were for magic (or in this case a very long math lesson)
I actually taught a 5 year old the simplest principle of Pi! and she had a ton of fun learning, kids are awesome! My favorite part is I get to go home after playing with them… and their parents have to put them to bed.
You will be a great dad someday
In the mean time don’t forget to fill them up on sugar before you take off lol
I would, but the parents are privy to that trick. I usually leave after they go to bed. I crack them out when I’m asked to pick them up at the bus stop. I get a kick out of, driving up and yelling out the window “any of you kids want some candy?” The gathered parents pull their children close and hurry off, muttering under their breath. The kids all get wide eyed, and of course only three dash wildly into traffic; hollering “Uncle David! guess what I did!” or “Look what I got!”