Anybody who works with kids knows that they love to tell stories. A sales men's first rule is that people love to talk about themselves. Get them telling personal stories, and you can sell them anything.
Anyway, anytime a kid sees you unattended, they will latch on and start chatting. It's kind of like seek and destroy.
One morning, I was sitting down at the teacher table, enjoying my breakfast, when a little boy (not in my class) came up with a smile on his face. He closed in til he was about 3 inches from my face and said, with no segue whatsoever, "Hey, do you want to know what I'm gonna do when I grow up?"
Now, you can't just say, "Scram kid, I'm eating." no matter how much you want to. It makes their little day to have just a little interest in whatever they're trying to tell you. It's a huge deal to them. So I answered, "Sure. What are you gonna do?"
Smiling like The Joker, he proudly proclaimed, "I'm gonna climb the highest mountain in the world!"
That actually caught me off guard. I was thinking more along the lines of, say, fireman or wrestler. I was impressed. That's a pretty lofty goal. Wondering what other huge plans he could have, I asked, "What are you going to do after that?"
He scrunched his little head in thought. Apparently no one had asked this before and he hadn't gotten that far into the planning stage. He pondered for a few moments, then quietly said, "Well, I guess I could climb back down..."
Kids are far, far more brilliant than we give them credit for.
