Kids’ Play
M
y oldest sister had made a salad for dinner and served it on everyone’s plate before we sat down. Coming to the table, Dad caught my four-year-old sister, Amy, poking his salad and told her to stop.
Amy was very quiet all through dinner. Finally, when the meal was over, Dad asked her, “Amy, why were you playing with my food?”
“I was trying to get the moth out,” she replied.
— ANNA WOZNIAK
I
was going over a basic math concept with my Grade 1 students, but they were having a great deal of difficulty. After the umpteenth attempt, I was running out of patience—apparently, this was evident to my students. I had to chuckle when one of the girls proclaimed to the class, “Uh-oh! That’s the same look my mom gets before she tells me I’m driving her up the wall.”
— ALLISON ANSORGER
O
ur five-year-old twins had been squabbling all day, and I’d finally had enough. Pulling them apart, I said, “How would you feel if Daddy and I argued like that?”
My son replied, “But you and Daddy chose each other. We had no choice.”
— JANE LIVINGSTON
M
y young daughter loves to go to performances at the local high school, so when her brother was in a spelling bee, she happily came along. But halfway through, she lost interest. Leaning in to me, she whispered, “This is the most boring play I have ever seen.”
— ANGIE AIKEN
M
y Grade 2 class was doing a special project in which they raised butterflies from caterpillars. The students and I watched the insects in our classroom aquarium as they attached themselves to the lid, each forming a chrysalis. Within a week they began to emerge, wet and crumpled. The kids watched in fascination as the wings began to straighten, and with careful fanning, the butterflies dried themselves.
About three days after hatching, the insects began to fly. One little boy in particular, who had been watching carefully each day, saw this and excitedly announced, “They’re flying!”
“Of course they’re flying!” a little girl in the class replied, rolling her eyes. “They’re called ‘butterflies.’ If they didn’t fly, they’d just be butter!”
— DIANE R. MARTIN
W
hen he received a journal as a gift, my eight-year-old son was mystified. “Mom, what am I supposed to do with this? The pages are blank.”
“You write down interesting stuff that happens to you,” I said.
“So it’s like a blog…on paper.”
— BEVERLY TAYLOR
T
he night we took our three young sons to an upscale restaurant for the first time, my husband ordered a bottle of wine. The server brought it over, began the ritual uncorking, and poured a small amount for me to taste. My six-year-old piped up, “Mom usually drinks a lot more than that.”
— T. ELLSWORTH, ON GCFL.NET
W
hile leading a tour of kindergarten students through our hospital, I overheard a conversation between one little girl and an X-ray technician.
“Have you ever broken a bone?” he asked.
“Yes,” the girl replied.
“Did it hurt?”
“No.”
“Really? Which bone did you break?”
“My sister’s arm.”
— A.L. GRABER
T
hanks to reruns, my kids discovered the old Ozzie ’ Harriet TV shows. My 11-year-old son was especially taken with Ricky Nelson. He wanted a guitar like his, wanted to sing like him, and decided to hunt down some of his old recordings.
After a long search he came home and announced, “I couldn’t find any Ricky Nelson albums, so I got some made by his brother.”
“David?” I asked, not recalling that he had much of a musical career.
“No. Willie.”
— WENDY SILVEY
I
have always tried to be conscientious about teaching my children respect by example, keeping an even tone when speaking to my boys, and reserving my “big voice” for serious, repeated offences. I found myself reflecting on this one morning after waking up with laryngitis.
I croaked out an explanation in a barely audible whisper to my eight-year-old son who turned to his five-year-old brother and said excitedly, “Matt! Mom can’t yell at us! What do you want to do?”
— TRACY COSTA
T
he first time my son was on a bike with training wheels, I shouted, “Step back on the pedals, and the bike will brake!”
He nodded but still rode straight into a bush.
“Why didn’t you push back on the pedals?” I asked, helping him up.
“You said if I did, the bike would break.”
— WILLIAM B. FROM THE CLASSIFIED GUYS
I
was on the computer in my home office when my eight-year-old son asked what I did for a living.
“I’m a consultant,” I said.
“What’s a consultant?”
“It’s someone who watches people work and then tells them how they could do it better.”
“We have people like that in my class,” he said, “but we call them pests.”
— KATIE ADAMS
A
fter passing his driver’s test, my grandson was asked to sign up to be an organ donor. Unsure, he turned to his father and asked, “Will it affect my football playing?”
— JANET RANNALS
I was standing at a crosswalk when a group of students marched by. “Okay, children, why do we all need to stay on the sidewalk?” the teacher asked.
I expected to hear something about the dangers of traffic. Instead I heard,
“Because if we don’t, our health insurance won’t cover us.”
— SANDRA JERGENSEN
A
nyone with toddlers knows that trying to control them is like herding cats. So I was impressed by a parenting trick of my husband’s.
Our two-year-old bolted out of our van in a busy parking lot, but my husband, Bill, got him to stay put by shouting, “Hands on the van.”
“Where’d you learn that?” I asked.
“From that TV show.”
“ Supernanny? Nanny 911? ”
“No,” he said. “Cops.”
— CHERI DRAPER
T
hree boys are bragging about their fathers.
“My dad can shoot an arrow and reach the target before the arrow does.”
“Well, my dad’s a hunter, and he can fire his gun and be there before the bullet.”
“That’s nothing,” the third boy says. “My dad works for the city. He stops working at 4:30 and gets home by 3:45.”
For Christmas I gave my kid a BB gun.
He gave me a sweater with a bull’s-eye on the back.
— RODNEY DANGERFIELD
T
o commemorate his first visit to our library, I gave a six-year-old boy a bookmark. More familiar with electronic gadgets than old-school tools, he had no clue how it worked. So I demonstrated by placing it between two pages, then closing the book. “When you start reading again, voilà!” I said, opening the book to my bookmarked page.
“Wow!” he said. “That’s cool!”
— CARRIE MULLER
D
uring Sunday school the substitute teacher asked my four-year-old what his name was. “Spider-Man,” said my son.
“No, I mean your real name,” pressed the teacher.
My son apologized. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s Peter Parker.”
— JENNIFER NORTON
A
little boy went to the library to check out a book titled Comprehensive Guide for Mothers.
“Is this for your mother?” the librarian asked.
“No,” said the boy.
“So why are you checking it out?”
“Because I started collecting moths last week.”
— L. B. WEINSTEIN
J
>
ust before a boy enters the barbershop, the barber tells his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch.” The barber puts a dollar in one open palm and two quarters in the other and asks the kid, “Which do you want?” The boy takes the quarters and leaves.
“See?” says the barber, laughing.
Later, the customer passes the boy, who is standing outside a candy store. “Why’d you take the quarters and not the dollar?” he asks.
“Because,” says the boy, “the day I take the dollar, the game’s over.”
— CONNIE BEHENSKY
M
y sister explained to my nephew how his voice would eventually change as he grew up. Tyler was exuberant at the prospect. “Cool!” he said. “I hope I get a German accent.”
— STACI BAILEY
M
y bargain-happy brother took his eight-year-old son to the pizzeria to pick up their order. Corey wanted to get the pizza himself, so my brother handed him a $20 bill and a $2 coupon and waited in the car. A few minutes later Corey appeared with the pizza, change, and the coupon.
“Wouldn’t they take the coupon?” my brother asked.
“Oh, sure, but we didn’t need it,” said Corey. “We had enough money.”
— ALAN ZOLDAN
Teacher: “George Washington not only chopped down his father’s cherry tree but also admitted it. Now, Joey, do you know why his father didn’t punish him?”
Joey:“Because George still had the axe in his hand?”
— NORA DORSO
W
hen our son, Joe, turned six, my husband and I decided it was high time for him to ditch the Winnie the Pooh underwear for something a bit more studly. So I bought him some Incredible Hulk briefs. When Joe got home, he found the package lying on his bed.
“Finally!” he exulted. “Adult underwear!”
— NORA DORSO
K
eith, a coworker, was driving his family to a campsite when an SUV towing a beautiful vintage Airstream trailer pulled up beside them. Keith was salivating at the thought of owning one when his three-year-old daughter weighed in.
“Look at that,” she said. “I guess they can’t afford a tent.”
— KARIN HORLINGS
I
love making clothes for my five-year-old granddaughter. And she, in turn, always seems happy to accept them. The other day I asked if she would like me to make her a skirt.
“Yes,” she said. “But this time, could you make it look like it came from a store?”
— BONNIE LOGAN
A
fellow teacher assigned his fourth-grade student to write a topic sentence for the following phrases: “Sam always works quietly. Sam is polite to the teacher. Sam always does his homework.”
The student’s topic sentence? “I hate Sam.”
— JEREMY BULLINGER
W
hen a nosy fourth-grade student wanted the scoop on what another teacher and I were discussing in private, I decided it was time for an impromptu lesson in manners.
“Do you know what ‘minding your own business’ means?” I asked pointedly.
He didn’t, but a student clear across the room shouted, “I do!”
— CARLEE NEWTON
O
ne day my three-year-old daughter asked when her birthday was. Knowing that the date, April 14, would mean nothing to her, I said, “It’s either just before or just after Easter.”
“Great,” she said.
“You don’t know when my birthday is either.”
— MARTHA HYNSON
M
y friend Susan was helping her five-year-old son review his math while her teenager was in the kitchen making a snack.
“You have seven dollars and seven friends,” Susan said. “You give a dollar each to two of them but none to the others. What do you have left?”
From the next room she heard her teenager call out, “Two friends.”
— DIANE KOH
We rushed our four-year-old son, Ben, to the emergency room with a terrible cough, high fever, and vomiting. The doctor did an exam, then asked Ben what bothered him the most.
After thinking it over, Ben said hoarsely,
“I would have to say my little sister.”
— ANGELA SCHMID
I
n the last two years our Micmac family, living in northern Ontario, has begun to find our roots. In doing this, one of the most important things for me is to share everything I am learning with my children.
I had explained to my eight-year-old daughter, Emma, that Columbus had mistakenly named us Indians, but that we called ourselves native or Anishinabe. I realized the impact my words were having when one day I was looking through Emma’s school agenda. There, on a map of the world, the words “Indian Ocean” had been neatly scratched out, and it now read proudly in bright red pen, “Native Ocean.”
— THERESA EAGLES
C
oncerned when one of his most reliable workers doesn’t show up, the boss calls the employee’s home. The phone is answered by a giggling child.
“Is your dad home?” the boss asks.
“Yes.”
“May I speak to him?”
“No.”
“Well, can I speak to your mom?”
“No. She’s with the policeman.”
Alarmed, the boss says, “Gosh. Well then, may I speak with the policeman?”
“No. He’s busy talking to the man in the helicopter that’s bringing in the search team.”
“My Lord!” says the boss, now really worried. “What are they searching for?”
“Me,” the kid chortles.
— DENISE STEWART
L
ast Christmas morning, after all the presents were opened, it was clear that my five-year-old son wasn’t thrilled with the ratio of toys to clothes he’d received. As he trudged slowly up the stairs, I called out, “Hey, where are you going?”
“To my room,” he said, “to play with my new socks.”
— RICK BURNS
T
his teenager was in my boutique for at least an hour choosing the perfect dress for a party. But the next day she was back with the outfit.
“Can I exchange this for something else?” she asked.
I was surprised, but I couldn’t argue with her explanation: “My parents like it.”
— SALI THOMAS
On the way back from a Cub Scout meeting, my grandson asked my son the question. “Dad, I know that babies come from mommies’ tummies, but how do they get there in the first place?” he asked innocently. After my son hemmed and hawed awhile, my grandson finally spoke up in disgust.
“You don’t have to make something up, Dad. It’s okay if you don’t know the answer.”
— HARRY NEIDIG
E
very morning I do a mad dash to drop off my son Tyler at day care so I can get to work on time. My impatience hit home one morning when he piped up from the back of the car, “Our car is really fast, and everyone else’s is slow because they’re all idiots, right, Mom?”
— RHONDA ROBERTS
S
cene: the bookstore where I work.
Dramatis personae : a father and his son.
Son: “Dad, does it really tell you how?”
Father: “How to what, Son?”
Son: “How to kill a mockingbird?”
— THERESA FINE-PAWSEY
W
hen our last child moved out, my wife encouraged me to join Big Brothers. I was matched with a 13-year-old named Alex. Our first outing was to the library, where we ran into his friend.
“Who’s he?” the friend asked Alex, pointing to me.
“My Big Brother, Randall.”
The boy looked at me, then back at Alex. “Dude, how old is your mother?”
— RANDALL MARTIN
A
teenager brings her new boyfriend home to meet her parents. They’re appalled by his haircut, his tat
toos, his piercings.
Later, the girl’s mom says, “Dear, he doesn’t seem to be a very nice boy.”
“Oh, please, Mom!” says the daughter. “If he wasn’t nice, would he be doing 500 hours of community service?”
— MARIA SALMON
L
ast June my friend told me about her plans for our upcoming prom. “I’m renting a stretch limo and spending $1,000 on a new dress, and I’ve reserved a table at the most expensive restaurant in town,” she said.
Our teacher overheard her and shook her head. “I didn’t spend that much on my wedding.”
My friend answered, “I can have three or four weddings. But a prom you do only once.”
— STEPHEN BIDDLE
T
he pregnant guppy in the science-room fish tank fascinated my seventh-grade class. We all anxiously awaited the arrival of her babies. But a lesson on human growth and development raised a question for one student.
“Mrs. Townsend,” she called out, “how will we know when the fish’s water breaks?”
— DANA TOWNSEND
I
n lectures on human genetics, I explained to my college students that males determine the sex of the offspring by contributing either an X or a Y chromosome. So at the end of the year, I put it on the final exam: “How is the sex of the child determined?”
One student wrote, “By examining it at birth.”
— PATRICIA S. GINDHART
A
Cherokee Indian was a special guest at my sister’s elementary school. He talked to the children about his tribe and its traditions, then shared with them this fun fact: “There are no swear words in the Cherokee language.”
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