...the saying says, beat youth and enthusiasm every time. I don't know the precise moment at which I turned evil, but ever since I did that saying has made more sense every day. Yet the other day I was unsettled by something that threatened my core beliefs.
My daughter's very close with her 11-year-old cousin, and has been all her life. Now she also has a 16-month-old cousin who everyone dotes on. Sometimes, though, on very important occasions, the older children need time to themselves. Such occasions, like the purchase of a new video game, require total concentration. They can no longer afford to applaud, or even be amused when the child points and says, "Dog." It doesn't even matter whether or not he correctly identifies a dog, and correcting him if he didn't is utterly out of the question. So they pick him up and bring him to the kitchen, where the adults are drinking coffee.
Now my wife is not nearly as evil as I am. But observing the kids turning the little one away, who could resist the temptation to turn him around and urge him to play with the older kids? Certainly, he'd rather be with them than us anytime. So this dance went on for a few rounds, with the confused toddler going back and forth, until my 11-year-old nephew decided it had gone on long enough, and threw down the gauntlet.
He came right into the kitchen, and did not say a word to any of us, having determined (correctly) that we were now the enemy and that further negotiation would be a waste of energy and valuable video-game time. He picked up the child's chair and plunked it directly in front of the TV.
Then he strapped the child into the chair, gave him a bottle of juice, and an unconnected video-game control. He and my daughter played the video game, the 16-month old sat contentedly thinking he was playing too, and this battle was over.
But the war continues.
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