Small Blunders

My cousin’s children returned from tuition one evening, with a doubt that had been troubling them for a while. They wanted to know why their tuition teacher had been blessed with such a vast backside. Their mother spent an hour or two coming up with a perfectly logical explanation, and this was a lot tougher than telling them about the birds and the bees. But some other children have other things worrying them.

All of us have stories of kids who say interesting things. Sadly enough, these stories stop when they grow up. But here, I will give interesting anecdotes involving children, where they’ve amused us without having to try too hard. So here is a tribute to the natural clowns.

My neighbor’s five-year-old took her mother’s pregnancy news rather well. She became accustomed to seeing her mother vomit and eventually on a drip when the baby was due. So it was only natural that when she found herself in hospital much later because of food poisoning, she assumed she was also pregnant. She was also vomiting and the doctor had put her on a drip. The parents eventually had to drag her out of the hospital, because she had accused the amused doctor of not giving her, her baby.

Like her, most kids prefer playing [or delivering babies] to studying. I used to struggle with the ABCs and wonder as to when I’d get to go out and play. And when you are that small, studying the alphabets seem like a huge task. One of my cousin’s came home one evening rather excited. She announced that two of her classmates were getting married. The boy had come to school with a card and on it he had written his name, with the name of the girl he liked. Then he told the class that it was their wedding card. My cousin was excited and when we tried telling her that her classmates were too young to get married, she declared emphatically that they could get married, as they knew their ABCs perfectly.

This reminds me of a family friend’s children. The little girl had trouble with plurals. If cat was singular, plural was always "Catis". [Perhaps some fetish for "is"] So her mother wasn’t surprised when she overheard the little one talk to her doll, "Take out your notebook, I will give u some "testis". Her younger brother took to learning Hindi recently. After making a pretense of studying, his mother decided to ask him the meanings of different words.

Mother: Ghao?

Son: village

Mother: Good. Ghar?

Son: house

Mother: Very Good. Ped?

Son: Tree

Mother: Very Good. Kissan?

Son: [screaming] JAM!

Kids are also funny because of their role models. Once, when the adults were engaged in a serious conversation about re-birth, my cousin’s daughter spoke about how she would like to be born again. Interested, everyone asked her who she would like to be in her next birth. Without much thought came her reply, "Scooby Doo."

She and her sister are often teased because they are the youngest two in the family. Their cousin once told them that the world was ending in two years. They were both worried when they heard this. The older one went to her mother and said, "If the world is ending, why should I go to school. I won’t live long enough to get to college either." But her younger sister had a different worry. "Amma, if the world is ending in two years, can I get married now instead of fifteen years later?"

We have a lot of fun at the expense of these kids. But what is touching is their innocence. One holiday these kids were home, when the carpenter was working on some chairs. The carpenter fascinated the older of the two sisters because his name was Jesus. After some thought, she told my mother that he was lucky and that he had to be a nice man because he was called Jesus. We were all amused at her logic, and we laughed even more when this Jesus cheated us off some money before absconding.

Kids are good fun because of the things they say. Even the brat next-door was amusing at times, when he wasn’t screaming and climbing up shelves with breakables. So we should enjoy these days before these very children grow up into boring adults who have lost all traces of innocence. And for those of you who haven’t had a conversation with little ones, start immediately. There is never a dearth of interesting "kiddie" ideas. But then you don’t want to miss any either!