About 10 minutes ago Owen and James ran downstairs and started shouting something about a concert.
“What?” I asked.
“We have a concert for you!” they said. “Come upstairs to our concert!”
They were so excited.
And so was I. How imaginative! They did it all on their own! And I had heard no screaming for the 30 minutes prior so they did it together happily, nicely—no fighting at all.
We got to their bedroom door. It was closed, with a little tag hanging from the doorway.
How cute, I thought.
With great fanfare, they opened their door to …
this.
“Ta da!” they said.
“It’s everything in your room in a big pile,” I said.
“Yes!” they screamed. “It’s our concert!”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “When does the concert start?”
“This is it! This is our concert! OUR CONCERT!”
“So this big pile of stuff in your room is the concert?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to clean the concert up?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When we’re done with the concert.”
“Is the concert over now?”
“Yes.”
I left.
I still don’t understand.
And instead of hearing the concert being cleaned up, I hear things being added to the concert.
“Owen! There’s another blanket! Put it in the concert!”
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry