Digesting Daniel : An Introduction

Daniel is my 10 year old son and the youngest of my three children. His brother, Matthew, is 14; and Lucy, his sister, is 12. Daniel has always been a bit of a different thinker, wise beyond his years but with an untouched innocence, and when he shares his delightfully insightful observations, I get to look at life from his perspective, and it makes me smile. So I thought I would share some snapshots of his mind with you too...

~It was the school holiday break and Daniel lamented, for the umpteenth time, "I'm bored Mum. I have nothing to do. I'm really, really bored."
So I told him, "Well, you could tidy your room. That's something to do."
"No." he said, matter-of-factly emphatic. "That's not an option."
"Oh." I said, "But yes, yes it is an option. You said you had nothing to do, and tidying up your room is something to do. So it's an option."
"Mum..." he said, giving me a disparaging look, "If tidying up my room was an option, it would be the same as playing a little kid's computer game - all happy and about really cute things, like puppies and rainbows and butterflies and fluffy bunny rabbits; and then along comes a big, mean, ugly man with a machine gun, and he just opens-fire and blows them all away! Not an option Mum."...~

~Lucy was having a moment. A 12-year-old-girl moment. She hated me. She hated her brothers. She hated the world. She hated her life. When Lucy has these moments, the boys and I have learned that the best way to survive them unscathed, is to just let her have them. To her credit, they don't happen very often, and when they do - they are usually over fairly quickly, so we just stay well out of her way, and ride them out. On this particular occasion though, the moment was going on for longer than usual, and it was becoming tiresome... Daniel was the first to lose his patience, and he finally turned to Lucy and said...
"You know Lucy, you just need to get a grip and remember that at least you got born. At least someone gave birth to you!"...~

~Daniel announced the other day that he was going to start jogging every morning - down the road to the primary school, and then once around the school field.
"And if I keep it up and jog every single day Mum, I'll start getting bigger love handles!", he declared, all wide-eyed and enthusiastic and eagerly optimistic.
"Love handles?" I asked
"Yes! Love handles!" he exclaimed, pulling up his T-shirt and tucking it under his chin, and patting his bony, little rib cage proudly.
I think he meant abs...~

~Well, it's been a few days since the "I'm going to go jogging every morning" announcement, but I haven't seen much progress yet - with Daniel's quest to get bigger love-handles... um... I mean abs. He did go for a jog the day after the announcement, and came back from it all exhilarated and delighted with himself, cheeks flushed and puffing, and waxing lyrical about the joys of jogging. But he didn't jog the next day. Or the day after that. Infact, he hasn't jogged since.
So I asked him about that...
"I have decided that jogging isn't such a great idea anymore Mum" he told me.
"Oh?" I asked, "Why's that?"
"'Because," he said, "I want people to trust me, and I don't want to find any bodies."
"What's that got to do with jogging?" I asked.
"Well," he explained, "I heard somewhere that people don't trust joggers, because they are the ones who always seem to find the bodies."...~