Sometimes I am certain my children are smarter than I am. On occasion, the words that come out of their mouths leave me wondering when we ate Chinese last and if they are stockpiling fortune cookie messages. Last Friday, I picked Aubrey, Emma and a friend up from school and as we made our way across town to get Sadie the conversation turned to boys.
“They are so annoying!” Their friend said.
“Boys are annoying at your age… and in middle school… and in high school. Really forever, I was going to stop at college or when you get married but actually? They’re always annoying.” I said. The girls exploded in giggles.
Aubrey piped up from the backseat, “Cats are just like girls.”
“How?” I asked.
“They never want to be touched. They just want to be left alone,” she said.
Her friend agreed, “Yeah and dogs are like boys… they ALWAYS want to be touched and they always bother you and won’t leave you alone.”
We howled with laughter as they gave me the run down of the day’s playground drama. Aubrey mentioned that someone at school had been trying to boss her little sister around on the playground, “She is PUSHING it with Emma. I’m not going to let her be mean to her.” I smiled, thankful that my girls have each other.
On Saturday Aubrey and I got to spend a little time alone getting ready for her small birthday party. (Her actual birthday was in August. I’ve outdone even myself by postponing her party for almost four months. We’ve been busy.) Aubrey ran errands with me and she brought up the playground incident again.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “bullies are like cooking marshmallows on the fire. They are all black and gross on the outside but on the inside they are gooey and sweet. They are just sad.”
“You are totally right, most of the time when somebody is being ugly to you it’s because they are sad about something. How’d you get so smart?”
She smiled, “You told me that last year, remember?”
“I remember talking about bullies but not marshmallows.”
“Oh, well… that was just an illustration,” Aubrey explained.
I smiled at the wisdom of my eight-year-old and wondered if she could get a part time job writing the fortunes for fortune cookies.
Confucius says, “Make S’mores out of your enemies.”
That is pure awesomeness. There’s a book in there somewhere. 😉
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Obviously, the quill doesn’t fall far from the inkwell. What a beautiful analogy for such a young kid. Love it! So glad I found your blog. I shall return…:)
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