【MITOCEF超级秀场】Random Chats with an (Almost) Four-Year-Old# mitOCEF - 海外中国教育基金会
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Random Chats with an (Almost) Four-Year-Old
"Early" this morning, I dreamed of a pair of cold little feet on my
shoulder.
Except that it really was not part of a dream. Those cold little
feet felt very real, and I knew exactly whom they belonged to as
soon as I bid good-bye to Caesar and Cleopatra.
I opened my eyes, and saw that my little daughter had already
dressed herself in her pajamas—with the pants on backwards,
as usual—and was sitting on my pillow, flipping through one of
the Berenstain Bears books we had checked out from the local
public library last week.
"Good morning," I said.
True to her nature, my daughter paid absolutely no attention to
such routine trivial salutations. We will have to work on that later.
"I like going to the bookstore," she announced instead.
"Which bookstore"? I asked.
"[The] bookstore with a lot of books, not a lot of shoes," came the
answer quickly.
It made sense, of course. If a bookstore had a lot of shoes instead
of books, then it would certainly not be a very good bookstore.
However, since she had a library book in her hands, I was not so
sure she knew what she was talking about.
"Did you mean the bookstore or the library?"
"Huh?" She looked at me with that familiar "say what?" expression
on her face.
"Did you mean you liked going to the library?"
"Yeah."
"Or that you liked going to the bookstore?"
"Yeah."
OK…it was obvious by that point that she had no idea about the
distinction between a bookstore and a library, and perhaps that
between the concepts of buying and borrowing. We will have to
work on that, too.
"Were you talking about the bookstore where they sell coffee?" I
decided to try a different approach.
"Yeah. And hot chocolate. And cookies. And lemon cake, my
favorite."
"Is it called Barnes and Noble?"
"No. Mama said it's called 'bookstore.'" With that, she jumped
out of bed, and the little feet pitter-pattered downstairs to the
sounds of the front door opening. That would be my wife coming
home from the graveyard shift at the hospital.
Thus concluded another deep-reaching, mutually beneficial, and
very constructive dialog with my little girl, the kind that will be
taking place many more times in the coming years until she, too,
inevitably transforms herself into one of those clams known as
teenagers.
"Early" this morning, I dreamed of a pair of cold little feet on my
shoulder.
Except that it really was not part of a dream. Those cold little
feet felt very real, and I knew exactly whom they belonged to as
soon as I bid good-bye to Caesar and Cleopatra.
I opened my eyes, and saw that my little daughter had already
dressed herself in her pajamas—with the pants on backwards,
as usual—and was sitting on my pillow, flipping through one of
the Berenstain Bears books we had checked out from the local
public library last week.
"Good morning," I said.
True to her nature, my daughter paid absolutely no attention to
such routine trivial salutations. We will have to work on that later.
"I like going to the bookstore," she announced instead.
"Which bookstore"? I asked.
"[The] bookstore with a lot of books, not a lot of shoes," came the
answer quickly.
It made sense, of course. If a bookstore had a lot of shoes instead
of books, then it would certainly not be a very good bookstore.
However, since she had a library book in her hands, I was not so
sure she knew what she was talking about.
"Did you mean the bookstore or the library?"
"Huh?" She looked at me with that familiar "say what?" expression
on her face.
"Did you mean you liked going to the library?"
"Yeah."
"Or that you liked going to the bookstore?"
"Yeah."
OK…it was obvious by that point that she had no idea about the
distinction between a bookstore and a library, and perhaps that
between the concepts of buying and borrowing. We will have to
work on that, too.
"Were you talking about the bookstore where they sell coffee?" I
decided to try a different approach.
"Yeah. And hot chocolate. And cookies. And lemon cake, my
favorite."
"Is it called Barnes and Noble?"
"No. Mama said it's called 'bookstore.'" With that, she jumped
out of bed, and the little feet pitter-pattered downstairs to the
sounds of the front door opening. That would be my wife coming
home from the graveyard shift at the hospital.
Thus concluded another deep-reaching, mutually beneficial, and
very constructive dialog with my little girl, the kind that will be
taking place many more times in the coming years until she, too,
inevitably transforms herself into one of those clams known as
teenagers.
