Two 7-year-olds and I wore them out!

[Tdarcos]

If you get 7-year-olds dumped upon you, typically what you get is a long line of questioning about everything. The world is new to them and they want to know how it works. My guess is that for most of you, it gets tedius until you tell them to shut up. In my case, it was the exact opposite, I kept on answering their questions until I wore them out. It probably didn't hurt that at the time I was taking Phen-fen for obesity which may have made me more talkative.

A few years ago my sister had a visiting consultant working for her who had to bring her two kids along. At the time I was unemployed so I ended up, basically on babysitting duty, dragging the two kids along with me when I went on errands and being the defacto target of their questions.

Some people know me and consider me a bore. I can conceivably talk, and talk, and talk about anything. There is another associate of ours who is known as a crushing bore, I drove him home, talking most of the way there, that he mentions to my sister at her office how "Paul sure likes to talk a lot."

Everyone in her office knew the guy from having being driven home by him or otherwise being in a car with him, broke up in gales of laughter. This is a guy who basically could talk for a long time about something that almost nobody has any interest in. Except me, I can listen to anyone talk about almost any subject.

But people still say I talk too much. Michael Raugh, someone me and Ben (Pinback) knew back when he ran a BBS that we both were on before Ben decided to take it over, happened to discover me a few years ago before Ben found me again and invited me over here, Michael sent me an e-mail that said basically I was the equivalent of Cliff Claven from "Cheers" on the BBS.

But anyway, these two kids kept asking questions beginning with "Why..." Well, for a guy who is well read, most of them you can either answer or you can give a reasonable educated guess. Since I never told them to shut up, and never belittled them for their questions, it probably stimulated more.

Until I wore them out.

We were coming up to a lighted baseball field and I get asked why they have all the lights on the field, and a few other questions. As it turns out we're right next to a parking lot at a closed church, so I decide it would be a wonderful place for a demonstration.

I remember once reading that kids really don't understand things unless they see and hear them for themselves. So I figured this would be a great way to explain it to them.

I pulled into the back of the church, put the van I was driving in Park, and I said, "You want to see what the field would look like without lights?" "Yeah!" "Watch." I kill the headlights and turn off the inside lights on the dashboard. It was like maybe 8 or 10 pm, so the back of the church is an empty parking lot, which means basically it's dark, I mean, all but pitch black.

"This is what that field would look like if they didn't have lights."

I give it about 5 or 10 seconds, then I turn the headlights and inside dashboard lights back on, put the vehicle back in gear, and drive home. The kids stayed silent the whole way home. The first time I remember them ever doing that.

Realizing that I'd probably experienced silence around the kids for the first time in days, I went over to my sister, and told her that if I'd ever been excessively talkative, especially after being asked so many questions by the two kids, I apologize for it, I kind of understood what she must have gone through!

One person I've told this to said I scared them. If I did it was unintentional.

But one thing came out of it, my sister told me the two kids *loved* having me take them anywhere because I was the only adult around who always had an answer to their questions and never told them to stop asking questions.