We were driving in the car - Rob, me, Tank, and Elijah - listening to music and enjoying it when suddenly this happens:
Elijah: I came up with a story that has a moral.
Rob and I look at each other. I turn off the radio.
Rob: Tell us your story.
Elijah: Okay. There's a man and he is addicted to drugs and doesn't do good things. There's also a naughty man and a wise man. Then there are three samples. One is a little, one is medium, and one is a lot.
Rob: What is the sample?
Elijah: It's just a sample of something. The man addicted to drugs chooses the big sample. The naughty man chooses the medium sample, and the wise man chooses the small sample. The small sample lasts the longest. Why?
Tamra: I thought this was a story. You're supposed to tell us.
Elijah: No, you tell me why.
Tamra: So, it's a riddle, then.
Elijah: No, a story.
Rob: You go ahead and tell us why, bud.
Elijah: Well, the big sample runs out first because the bad man takes it home and uses it all up fast. The naughty man uses his sample slower, but still fast. And the wise man's sample lasts a long time because he is wise and uses it only a little bit.
Rob: Nice. So the moral is to be wise and use our resources sparingly?
Elijah: Yeah.
Cute, no?
Also to be noted: Elijah is our child who is hyper concerned about wasting things. "Don't drink the milk!" he'll say, "You'll waste it!" "We shouldn't drive anywhere! We'll waste gas!" We frequently have discussions about this. (And it's funny that he's so concerned about the topic, because he's the child who often takes food and then doesn't finish it. Which, you know, actually IS wasting.)
Note number two: Sometimes I'm not sure that English is Elijah's first language. He often has these things to say, and they're deep, powerful things, but he can't quite spit them out. You can feel them, hovering right behind his tongue, but refusing to come out right. I'm convinced that if we could all speak Elijah, we'd be amazed at the kid's wisdom and strength.
No comments:
Post a Comment